Seven new ports in india to ease increasing traffic congestion

In order to tackle increasing traffic congestion with ease, the Indian Government has plans to construct seven new ports across the nation

Uplifting the port sector seems to be the foremost criteria for the Ministry of Shipping (MoS) at present. India is keen on seeking private funds for seven new ports that could run up to a whopping US$ 7.6 billion. Recently, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s announcement of US$ 1 trillion investment in India’s port sector, in order to ease pressure points in transportation has stirred things up for the sector.

According to Rakesh Srivastava, Joint Secretary of MoS, two-thirds of funds for betterment of the port sector would be raised through the private sector. Seven Indian states have been approached with the proposal to consider the options. However, no specific timeframe has been highlighted by the MoS for the project. It is expected that the seven new ports would be ready and functional by the year 2017.

EN Rao, Executive at Vision India Logistics, a small-sized shipping agent based at Ghaziabad, said, “The MoS’ initiative to construct more projects as a part of the developmental plan is appreciable. More ports indicate more capacity to handle increased traffic pressure. With the Indian port sector touted to witness a major increase in traffic in the years to come, this plan is certainly going to bring in a lot of benefits.”

However, Rama Subramaniyan, manager at Chennai based Alpha Logistics, a small-sized shipping agent, begs to differ on this development.

Subramaniyan said: “Construction of new ports is not the only solution. A holistic approach should be adopted in order to bring in real development in the port sector. Capacity expansion among existing facilities is key to overall development of the sector. Since constructing new ports is expensive, expanding pre-existing ones makes more sense.”

India presently boasts of 13 major ports and the average turnaround time for the Indian ports was 4.4 days in 2010. When compared to nations like Singapore and Hong Kong, whose turnaround time is six hours, the difference is enormous.