The Hindu Business Line : Private port operators seek Govt nod for running trains

PRIVATE port terminal operators have sought Government permission to operate trains for movement of containers in a bid to sort out the problems of containers getting held up for rail movements.

"Unless private port operators are allowed to operate trains and something is done to evacuate containers very quickly, India's growth will suffer," says a senior official with P&O Ports, which operates container terminals at Jawaharlal Nehru, Chennai and Mundra ports.

How long is the Railway Ministry going to support Concor? If India has to keep pace with its projected GDP growth of 8.2 per cent in 2004, then something drastic needs to be done, he asserted.

Currently, public sector Concor has a monopoly over container movement by rail in the country. Though, a policy to invite private sector participation in the movement of containers has been in existence since 1994, the same is yet to be implemented.

Significantly, the Reform Committee headed by Dr S. Narayan, Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister, has in a recent report suggested that the Railway Ministry need to implement the decision in a time-bound manner.

"The implementation of the policy on private sector participation in the movement of containers would make Indian exports more competitive in the global market," the Narayan panel report has said. The involvement of the private sector in the movement of containers by rail would help cut transaction costs by increasing efficiency besides reducing transportation costs by bringing competition, the report has noted.

To buttress its case for private entities to run container trains, P&O Ports has highlighted the recent problems in getting old dated containers cleared from Concor's flagship inland container depot (ICD) at Tughlakhabad near Delhi for its Mundra International Container Terminal (MICT).

Since the last week of December, P&O Ports has faced difficulties in old-dated containers getting held up for rail movements at Tughlakhabad for the Mundra stream.

There has been a regular pendency of close to 300 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for Mundra during the last three weeks as the overall demand for Mundra is in excess of the available supply of trains.

"Even with this pendency, which represents about 3 days of bookings and with trains moving almost every alternate day if not even more frequently sometimes, there should not be any reason for containers older than 4-5 days lying for clearance at Tughlakhabad. But, even now there is a considerable backlog in place," says the P&O Ports official.

Urging the authorities to attend to the problem immediately, P&O Ports has said that the old-dated containers should be cleared from Tughlakhabad on a one-time basis by following the `first-in-first-out' principle for Mundra traffic.

"This will go a long way in satisfying the requirements of trade and help in developing Mundra port by attracting imports besides de-congesting the already heavily patronised container terminals run by the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and by P&O Ports at Nhava Sheva," the official said.