‘Ports should focus on ease of doing business,delivering value to customers’

Ports should focus on ease of doing business and delivering the value to the customer, and for that co-operation among all the stake-holders, especially the government agencies, is needed, according to P Raveendran, the Chairman of Chennai port.

Raveendran was chairing a session on port services on Friday, the concluding day of the two-day Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-sectoral Technical and Economic Co-operation (BIMSTEC) ports’ conclave.

“In the global supply chain, ports play a vital role and a country’s economic growth and prosperity largely depended on them,” Raveendran said.

Rinkesh Roy, Chairman, Paradip port, explained the steps taken by the port to pave the way for hassle-free cargo movement and evacuation and how it had resulted in a 60-70 per cent jump in volumes. “We are focussing on infrastructure development, transparency system and taking care of ecological concerns. Single window system and e-services have played a key role,” he explained.

UD Jayatissa, Director (Logistics) of Sri Lanka Ports’ Authority, explained, how Colombo port had emerged as a major container hub in Asia and the importance of containerisation. “Container vessels are getting bigger and all the ports, including Visakhapatnam which has a container terminal, should gear up for that,” he said.

DK Srinivas, Principal Commissioner of Customs, Visakhapatnam, spoke about the role of Customs in making port operations easy for customers. U Sein Win, representative of Myanmar, and Ugyen Tshering, the representative of Bhutan, also spoke.

K Ramamohana Rao, the Chairman of Visakhapatnam port, thanked all the delegates.