Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru ports — Gateway to world trade

Situated on the Western seafront, Maharashtra is a key gateway for the country’s exports and imports. The two key ports – Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), which was set up in the 17th century, and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), the relatively new Port – collectively account for 22 per cent of the total traffic handled at 13 major ports across the country.

The state has a coastline of 720 km on the Arabian seafront. Many important markets of Europe, Middle-East and Africa are bridged through the seafront.

Situated close to the auto hub of Pune (where auto majors like Volkswagen and Tata Motors have set-up shop) and industrial clusters like Navi Mumbai and Nashik, MbPT and JNPT provide easy and vital access to companies to ship their products abroad.

Mumbai Port

Mumbai Port has played an important role in the development of trade and commerce in the country. The port, which was designed to handle general cargo, has adapted to the changing times. It is now also capable of handling containerised cargo.

The port handles about 10 per cent volume of the sea-borne trade handled by major ports of the country. MbPT recorded a 3 per cent rise in traffic in 2011-12, at a time when other major ports recorded de-growth of 1.73 per cent.

The strength of the Mumbai Port really is the fact that it caters to entire range of cargo types like break bulk, project cargo, edible oil, coal, petroleum oil and lubricants (POL), chemicals, automobile cement and fertilizers.

However, the Port also is facing challenges posed by competition from adjoining ports and private ports, changing traffic patterns, inherent physical constraints and continuing labour intensive operations.

It is taking various measures to render cost effective and quality service to the trade. It is situated almost midway on the West coast of India and is gifted with a natural deep water harbour of about 400 square kilometres.

The main navigational harbour channel is, for the great part, a natural deep-water fairway. The channel has been deepened to 11 metres. It is adequate to meet the requirement of a large number of cargo vessels, passenger ships and deep-drafted tankers. Due to good lighting arrangements navigation is allowed at the port round the clock. MbPT has set itself a target of achieving 61 million tonnes of traffic in the current fiscal, with the prime focus to improve POL and container traffic.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU PORT

JNPT, situated in Navi Mumbai, is the biggest container handling Port in India, handling around 60 per cent of the country's containerized cargo.

The port has set for itself a long term goal of achieving 10 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU's) by the year 2014-15.

JNP boasts of a full fledged Customs House, 23 Contanier Freight Stations and a large number of inland container depots spread across the country.

JNPT will soon invite bids to build a fourth terminal on its premises with a capacity to handle 4.8 million tonnes of container every year. This, after a consortium led by PSA International backed out after failing to sign the contract.

Both the ports are well connected to the other parts of the state and the country by rail and road network.

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