Jawaharlal Nehru Port, the country’s largest container hub, is set to enter a new phase of growth.
The main driver of this next phase of development will be a special economic zone that will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at JN Port on Saturday.
The SEZ within the port covers an area of 277 hectares and is expected to attract investments of over ₹4,000 crore. JNPT plans to develop the project on EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) basis and hopes to complete it in three years.
This is one of the two port-based economic zones that Finance Minister Arun Jaitely announced in the Union Budget. The second one is at Kandla Port in Gujarat.
Apart from warehouses, the zone will have electronics, textile, apparels, engineering, energy and healthcare units, said a JNPT official.
By the time the SEZ comes up, the port will also have its fourth terminal ready to handle the increase in volume.
The ₹8,000-crore terminal — a PPP project being developed by the Port of Singapore Authority — will have the capacity to handle 4.8 million standard containers a year.
Another project, the 330-meter standalone terminal with a capacity to handle eight lakh containers, is being implemented by DP World, Dubai, one of the existing private terminal operators at JN Port. The berth is expected to be ready by December 2015.
With all these projects on stream, JN Port, which celebrated its Silver Jubilee in May, hopes to achieve its traffic target of 10 million containers (TEUs) by 2017.
The port also plans to set up a 26 million tonnes liquid cargo terminal with an estimated cost of ₹2,496 crore.
To improve the connectivity, which is a major issue hurting port users, JNPT is also taking up a road development project jointly with NHAI and CIDCO with an investment of ₹1,926 crore.
The foundation stone of this project will also be laid by the Prime Minister on Saturday.
Successful modelThe free zone-based port development is a successful model followed in many counties.
In India itself, the faster growth of Adani Port was aided to a large extent by the SEZ at Mundra.
However, unlike Mundra, which is a mulit-cargo port, JNPT handles mainly containers.
So the port’s growth will depend on the kind of units that will come up in the SEZ and the volume of cargo they generate, said Ravichandran, senior analyst with rating agency ICRA. JN Port, which was commissioned in 1989 by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, now accounts for more than 55 per cent of the country’s container traffic. Last fiscal, the port handled 4.16 million standard containers.
However, for the past few years, JNPT has been facing congestion and capacity constraints as its expansion plans got delayed.
Added to it were the frequent labour unrests at the private terminals, affecting the port’s overall volume. There have also been reports of diversion of cargo from JNPT to other ports.
JNPT officials say the port has been functioning beyond its designed capacity and that creates problems.
Once the capacity is enhanced and the proposed connectivity and other infrastructure projects are implemented, all the present problems will get resolved.
A section of the port users, however, feel unless the law and order situation in and around JNPT is improved, the SEZ may find it difficult to attract private investments. It is an issue that the port needs to take up with the State Government, they point out.