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Major ports in the country are gearing up to make commercial use of their surplus lands to boost earnings. This follows the new land policy for major ports unveiled by the Government last month.
Land policy is considered as one of the significant frameworks guiding the functioning of ports. The world over ports have been leveraging on their surplus lands to increase revenue.
The major ports have set in motion a move to prepare their land use policies, which will then go to their respective boards for approval. The cardinal thrust will be to allot land either on licence or lease basis depending on the port's requirements and land use zoning.
The port trusts have been directed to allot land inside custom bound area only on licence basis, with the chairmen having the power to grant the licences. These licences can be granted up to a maximum period of 11 months and in accordance with the scale of rates approved by a competent authority. The licence, which can be granted through a tendering process, can be renewed by the chairmen and the board twice.
Custom bound area
The chairmen of the ports have also been given the freedom to allot land inside custom bound area on medium term lease basis up to 10 years to port users for setting up of certain port-related structures such as conveyors, silos, pipelines and weigh bridges — no permanent structures such as godowns and warehouses will, however, be permitted. For lands outside custom bound area, the ports will be permitted to issue licence for both port-related and non-port related activities.
Broadly, land should be leased out up to a period of 30 years, with cases of fresh lease above 30 years can be sent to the Ministry for consideration. Leasing has to be done through a competitive bidding process and the reserve price of such plots will normally be six per cent of the market value of the plot.
Recently, the Ministry proposed that major ports could be given the freedom to decide their user charges based on market conditions. At present, the Tariff Authority of Major Ports (TAMP) decides the user charge or tariff ceiling.
With these policy shifts, major ports could take up expansion projects to increase their combined throughput capacity to 3,280 million tonnes by 2020, three times the existing capacity. Significantly, the Government estimates half of the proposed capacity will be created by non-major ports.
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