The Hindu Business Line : PCHA gears up to clear more import, export consignments

TO ease the congestion at the ports in Mumbai, the newly formed Pune Custom House Association (PCHA) is all set to shoulder the responsibility of clearing the import and export materials from Pune.

Talking to presspersons, Mr Raj Deepak Bhargava, President of PCHA, said that the PCHA has the capacity to handle over 40,000 containers per month but only one fourth of its services were currently being utilised.

The industrial houses in the city currently import heavy melting, scrap and various industrial goods and plastics and export forging finished goods, machineries and garments.

He noted that close to 20,000 containers, both export and import, were in transit from locations such as Kolhapur, Solapur, Satara, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Aurangabad.

He noted that the custom traffic during the previous year was around 9,600 TEU while during the current year it was around 11,400 TEUs, which was just a marginal rise.

He noted that three dry ports container services operated from Pune, namely Concor, Container Corporation of India, Central Warehousing Corporation and the privately run Dynamic Logistics which handled mostly air and sea consignments.

He said, the association, which has about 22 members and registered about a couple of weeks ago, was planning to conduct seminars and open house sessions etc to create the awareness of the PCHA and the benefits that could be accrued by customers by making Pune the hub for clearance.

He noted that there are about 40 registered custom house associations of which only 12 were functional.

Mr Bhargava pointed out that there was a misconception among the industrial houses that clearance at the Mumbai ports were faster.

He added that usually "due to heavy congestion at the port, the exporters generally incurred heavy losses and in some cases even suffered damages and these could be reduced if the clearances were done from Pune.''

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