The Hindu Business Line : Concor offers promotional rates for Chennai loads from North

THE Container Corporation of India (Concor) is to shortly announce "promotional" rates for transportation of exports from north India's inland container depots (ICDs) to Chennai for shipments through Chennai port's container terminal run by P&O Ports.

The move is aimed at tackling the pendency problem, which after hitting the Jawaharlal Nehru port for the past several months, has now spread to Chennai port. Jawaharlal Nehru port's Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT), badly hit by pendency problem, is also run by P&O Ports.

Beleagured by the huge pendency problem at NSICT (the magnitude of the problem being 4000 to 5000 TEUs at any point of time), P&O Ports has thrown open its Chennai container terminal to north Indian importers. It has joined hands with Concor, which, apart from running trains for transporting imported containers from Chennai port's container terminal to various north Indian ICDs, is also offering "promotional rates" for its service. Accordingly, a dozen import trains, it is learnt, have been operated so far on the route.

It is now felt that "promotional rates" only for transportation of imports will not help. A similar sop will be needed also for transportation of exports.

The reason is simple. There has been no shipment of exports so far from north India through Chennai container terminal. As a result, Concor is being required to run trains only in one direction.

This is proving costly. On several occasions, it has been required to reposition empty rakes from other places at a cost. At times, the import containers are required to wait for Concor's domestic rakes on the route to arrive, i.e rakes carrying domestic traffic from north India to Chennai.

Apart from procedural problems involved in transferring a domestic rake for handling international traffic, there is also a mismatch - the volume of domestic traffic moving between north India and Chennai is smaller than the number of imported containers slated for movement in the opposite direction.

The top brass in Concor (with strong support from P&O Ports) therefore is of the view that that the north Indian exporters must be prevailed upon to opt for Chennai container terminal in preference to other container terminals if the services to and from Chennai are to achieve viability. Hence the proposal for "promotional rates" for exports.

Inquiries with Concor reveal that it has no immediate plan to announce similar "promotional rates" for container terminals in other ports such as Visakha container terminal in Visakhapatnam port on the east coast or Mundra container terminal in Mundra port on the West as it is felt that these two terminals will attract traffic on their own strength.

However, a section in Concor is also of the view that any effort to generate traffic by giving sops, as is being done in case of Chennai terminal, is unsustainable over a long period.

The trading community too feels that Concor should announce similar "promotional rates" for all the container terminals it serves. "Let there be a level-playing field and let the shippers have the freedom to choose," it is observed.

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