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P. Manoj

New Delhi , March 3

IGNORING protests from a few iron ore exporters, the Shipping Ministry has decided to stand by its February 14 order directing the Chennai Port Trust to introduce a slot/quota system for iron ore exports from April 1 to prevent exporters from chartering ships without lining up cargo.

"We can't go on changing the order. It was well thought out and issued after holding detailed discussions with the iron ore exporters. It was not done to favour somebody," a Ministry official told Business Line.

A couple of small iron ore exporters had protested the Ministry's decision to allocate 3.5 railway rakes to the public sector MMTC out of a maximum of 7.5-8 rakes that can be tippled by the wagon tipplers operated by the Port Trust. The remaining 4-4.5 rakes were allocated to other players with MSPL getting 1.4, NMDC 0.8, Sesa Goa 0.8, TML 0.5 and others 1.

These entities had told the Port Trust that the Ministry order would upset their plans as they had already chartered ships to haul the cargo.

"The decision was taken in the benefit of the major iron ore exporters and to keep up the image of the country. In fact, the rake allocation was finalised as per the suggestions made by the exporters themselves", the official pointed out. "It is not correct to say that the order is faulty just because one or two players are not happy. We can't make everybody 100 per cent happy," he stated.

Besides, the protesting exporters cannot say that the Ministry order is discriminatory in nature when they had themselves done wrong by chartering ships without aggregating the cargo. This had resulted in ships being forced to wait at anchorage for want of cargo, incurring huge demurrage costs that have to be borne by the shippers at the load port.

"When berths are not available and the cargo has not been lined up, how can the exporters charter ships," he asked. At one point, about 15 vessels were lying at the port's anchorage, some of them waiting for more than 45 days to load the iron-ore cargo. This was giving a wrong picture about Chennai port to the entire world and that too for no fault of the port, he pointed out.

Having fixed the slot/quota for exporters, the Ministry has directed that the ships chartered by the exporters can come to the port only 10 days after one shipload of cargo is collected at the port. In this way, the cargo will be ready to load as soon as the ship comes in and the vessel can sail off without any delay. This will avoid ships calling at the port and waiting for the cargo for days on end incurring demurrage costs, he explained. " Because of this, the Port's name was getting unnecessarily spoilt," the official said.

Based on the rake allocation, the port trust has made a sequencing of the number of ships that can be handled their berthing and allocation of plots for aggregating the cargo.

The allocation sequence thus finalised is for the first quarter (April-June) of the next fiscal. Thereafter, the allocation sequence will be reviewed, the official said. The iron ore exported through Chennai port are destined mainly for China.

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