The Hindu Business Line : Congestion at Nhava Sheva terminal

With exporters' shipment schedules going haywire because of congestion at NSICT, the Commerce Ministry intervened to sort out the problem. Instead of hammering out a solution, however, JNPT and NSICT seem to have got off on the wrong foot.

DESPITE exporters crying hoarse for a solution and the Commerce Ministry intervening to find a way out, efforts to tide over the congestion at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) have not yielded concrete results so far. Far from sorting out the problem, the private operator and its licensor, the JNPT, have locked horns over a recent decision aimed at improving the situation.

The P&O Ports-operated Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT) has accused the JNPT of back-tracking on its assurance — made at a meeting held by the Commerce Ministry in a bid to ease the massive congestion problem at the private container terminal — to hand over one of the rail tracks to the private operator.

A massive backlog of boxes has been building up at the NSICT as it handles larger volumes than the JNPT but has only two rail tracks to evacuate the containers.

At the February 17 meeting in New Delhi, the the JNPT had informed the NSICT of its decision to hand over for one month its rail track No 6 exclusively for back-loading NSICT boxes.

"It has been decided at the meeting held on February 17 in the Commerce Ministry that Line No 6 will be allowed for back-loading of NSICT boxes for a period of one month," says a communication sent by the JNPT to the NSICT on February 20.

Assuring its fullest cooperation for back-loading of NSICT boxes for any destination for the rakes handled at Line No 6, including the deployment of reach-stackers, the JNPT had urged the NSICT to "ensure supply of tractor-trailers/boxes for faster turnaround of the rakes and, in turn, to reduce the pendency level of the NSICT ICD containers to the comfortable level," the communication stated.

However, P&O Ports says that the decision communicated by the JNPT to the NSICT on the issue does not truly reflect the decision taken at the Commerce Ministry meeting.

"We clearly recall that during the meeting on February 17, the JNPT had expressed its willingness to hand over Line No 6 for total integrated operation by NSICT, for a trial period of about three months, or when the ICD pendency at NSICT comes down," Mr Ramesh G. Khare, Chief Executive Officer, NSICT, has said in a letter written to the Shipping and Commerce Ministries.

"What was communicated by JNPT is quite different from what was stated in Delhi on February 17 or announced subsequently in the berthing meeting of the port", he added.

Further, the process mentioned by JNPT has been in place for a long time. "We are, therefore, not sure as to the reasons why it is being reiterated in the context of the Delhi meeting held on February 17," says Mr Khare.

In the wake of the February 17 meeting, the JNPT had handed over Line No 6 to the NSICT exclusively for back-loading of its import boxes destined for various inland container depots.

This means that after off-loading/discharging the export containers brought mainly from Northern India on Line No 6 operated by JNPT, the train would load only the import boxes of NSICT on its return leg to the North.

"This will lead to faster turnaround of rakes and help ease the congestion to a large extent," a government official said.

Currently, there is a pendency averaging around 3,000 import boxes (down from 4,500 boxes a month ago) at the NSICT, which increases with the arrival of fresh import containers.

The pendency will have to be reduced to 1,500 boxes before normal operations can be resumed. This will take about a month, he reckoned.

Even after the direction given by the Commerce Ministry, exporters had complained of difficulties to plan their shipments as cases of export cargo `shut-outs' from the scheduled vessels have become frequent. Exporters are facing problems with their overseas buyers as the shipment schedules committed by them are getting severely disrupted due to the congestion at the NSICT, an exporter pointed out.

"The Government has to take effective steps immediately to resolve the congestion problem as otherwise it will affect exports during the peak months of March and April," he said.

A P&O Ports official explained that the practice of allowing back-loading of NSICT boxes on Line No 6 has been in place for almost a year. "There is nothing new in this. What we have been asking the JNPT is to give us one more line on which we can deploy our own reach-stackers and cranes so that we can unload/load containers at a much faster pace than is being done currently to improve the exit of containers from our terminal," the official said.

After reportedly agreeing at the February 17 meeting to allow the NSICT to deploy its own equipment on Line No 6, the JNPT apparently turned back in the face of strong opposition from the unions.

The union leaders are understood to have opposed any attempts to hand over the Port's facility to the private operator. Given the large inventory levels at the Port and the containers being handled by the NSICT, it is physically impossible for the private operator to handle more than six trains a day on Line Nos 4 and 5 at the port used by the NSICT.

"We have reached a peak. If we handle more trains, our efficiency level will go into negative," the P&O Ports official pointed out, adding that "every time the inventory level crosses 15,000 TEUs, our export gates will have to be closed, much to the detriment of Indian exporters."