The Hindu Business Line : `Port policy loaded against dry bulk cargo traffic'

The KoPT Chairman drew attention to the fact that top three cargo handling ports in the country, namely Visakhapatnam, Kolkata and Chennai, were by and large dry bulk cargo handling ports.

Mr A.K. Chanda, Chairman, Kolkata Port Trust, at `Logistic East', a seminar on Connectivity for Competitiveness organised by CII in Kolkata on Friday. — A. Roy Chowdhury

Kolkata , Aug. 26

DR A.K. Chanda, Chairman of Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT), today emphasised the need for a suitable policy on how to handle dry bulk traffic more efficiently in ports.

"The country's port policy must address the issue of the management of dry bulk traffic," Dr Chanda said while addressing a seminar on `Logistics East: Connectivity for Competitiveness' organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Eastern Region, here on Friday.

The present policy, he pointed out, was tilted more towards with the management of containerised traffic accounting for a meagre 15 per cent of the country's total sea-borne trade as compared to a much larger share of the bulk traffic.

The KoPT Chairman drew attention to the fact that top three cargo handling ports in the country, namely Visakhapatnam, Kolkata and Chennai, were all located on the east coast and these were by and large dry bulk cargo handling ports.

Yet the present policy gave more thrust to containerised traffic in which the west coast ports had the largest share.

This, he felt, might be due to the value-addition which was more in containers than in bulk traffic comprising mostly primary commodities.

"While no one will dispute the importance of containerised traffic, it is also true that the significance of dry bulk cargoes in the country's trade and therefore in the economy as a whole can hardly be over-emphasised," he said adding that the issue of logistics and supply chain management in the East therefore had to be viewed in the context of the key role being played by the east coast ports.

Dr Chanda refused to accept that Kolkata was a low draft port. "Kolkata port has the longest navigable channel of 232 km compared with 110 km or so of all other ports put together and at one end of it the draft is as low as seven metres and at the other end it is as high as 50 metres, the deepest draft that is available in any Indian port," he said.

"The future development of the port, therefore, has to take place closer to the deeper draft end of the channel," he added.

KoPT, it was pointed out, was toying with the idea of a setting up two new multipurpose berths at Diamond Harbour, where the average draft would be close to 10 metres.

Earlier, Mr Alok Mukherjee, past President, CII, Eastern Region, in his welcome address, stressed the need for developing manpower suitably trained in logistics and supply chain management if the country's present economic boom was to be sustained.

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