Kamarajar Port Ltd, India’s only state-owned that is run as a company, has been entrusted with the task of implementing the ₹44,000 crore International Container Transhipment Port project at Galathea Bay in Great Nicobar Island, officials said.
Earlier, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways had mandated Kolkata-based Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Authority as the nodal agency for executing the project.
“Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Authority has finalised and submitted the detailed project report of the project to the Ministry. The implementation is now entrusted to Kamarajar Port Ltd,” said a government official.
It is not clear whether Kamarajar Port Ltd will be the sole agency implementing the project.
“That is not clearly spelt out. But the thinking is that, as a company Kamarajar Port Ltd is in a better position to raise money from the market or to get equity inducements into the project than any major port authority,” the official said.
Kamarajar Port Ltd is a subsidiary of Chennai Port Authority.
The ministry had earlier planned to build the transhipment port at Galathea through a special purpose vehicle of four state-owned major port authorities comprising Deendayal port Authority, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority, Paradip Port Authority and VOC Port Authority.
Each of these four major ports were expected to hold a 20-25 per cent stake in the SPV and develop the basic infrastructure such as dredging and breakwater construction of the new port after which cargo handling operations would be outsourced to private specialists in the field, the official said.
These four port authorities, though, are said to have expressed reservations on putting money to develop the new port as each of them are pursuing huge expansion plans within their respective ports such as the outer harbour container terminal project at VOC Port as well as greenfield ports such as Vadhvan in Maharashtra by JN Port Authority and Bahuda Muhan in Odisha by Paradip Port Authority.
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has notified the international container transhipment port at Galathea Bay as a ‘major port’ or those owned by the Union government.
When constructed, it will be the country’s 14th major port.
The new port will likely be developed in four phases with the first phase having a capacity to handle 4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).
The capacity will be expanded to 16 million TEUs by 2058. A TEU is the standard size of a container and a common measure of capacity in the container business.
Galathea will be India’s third international container transhipment port/terminal after those at Vizhinjam and Cochin run separately by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd and DP World Ltd.
(source: ET Infra)
