The Hindu Business Line : Increased traffic from East holds key to Sethusamudram success

Chennai, Nov. 29 Between April and September, the Tuticorin port handled 791 ships, and of this only 61 would have needed to use the proposed Sethusamudram Ship Canal. In other words, only 13 per cent of the total number of ships that used the Bay of Bengal would have passed through the canal in the six-month period.

The success of the Sethusamudram project may depend to a great extent on increased traffic from eastern India and South East Asia to Tuticorin and vice versa. At present, traffic to and from Tuticorin is heavily towards the west and West Asia through the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea.

If this trend continues, fewer ships would transit the canal using the Bay of Bengal, according to industry sources.

Data collated by Business Line between June and August this year show that most of the ships to and from Tuticorin were from the West and West Asia, which would not need to use the canal.

For instance, out of the 110 bulk ships that called at Tuticorin port, 62 were from the West and West Asia. The others were from eastern ports such as Paradip, Yangon and Singapore, and only these ships would have used the canal.

On the export front, out of the 178 ships that went from Tuticorin, 162 ships were towards the West (135 to Male alone) and only 16 went to the East.

In the container traffic, out of the 78 ships, 66 are to the West and 12 to the East.

In other words, in the present situation only one or two ships would use the canal daily, as against six or seven projected in the project report of the canal.

There is, however, scope for increased traffic from the east, especially from Paradip, with the commissioning of the new thermal power plant of Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

Two new thermal power plants, each with 500 MW capacity, at a cost of Rs 4,600 crore (estimated two years ago) are proposed to be set up by NLC Tamil Nadu Power Ltd, a joint venture between NLC and the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB). The plants would come up adjacent to the Tuticorin Thermal Power Station of TNEB.

The plants were likely to be commissioned in 2008. Annually, about 5.5 million tonnes of thermal coal would be handled in the port through a proposed captive jetty to be constructed for this purpose.

This would be part of the port’s inner harbour development, the port announced earlier.