According to source-based information, the board of trustees of the Chennai Port decided to restructure the Rs 3,686 crore container terminal project as it failed to attract bidders for the project in the current form.
The port planned to invest Rs 561 crore on the project and attract the remaining Rs 3,125 crore investment from private sector.
The port trust shortlisted seven bidders for the proposed terminal with a capacity to load 4 million standard containers a year. However, none of the bidders submitted bids for the project even as the the last deadline extension lapsed recently.
Following this, the board of trustees, at its recent meeting, is learnt to have scrapped the project and decided to restructure it.
The project was part of the shipping ministryÂ’s plan to implement 30 port projects worth Rs 24,633 crore by March 2014 to add 288.48 million tonne of cargo-handling capacity at the 12 major ports.
Some reports indicate that ports in the eastern coast of India don’t attract enough container volume to warrant the use of very large ships capable of carrying 14,000 standard containers and above.
Besides, the infrastructure for evacuating containers is already stretched with the existing two terminals at the port. The elevated expressway to the port has been stalled for several months because of a dispute between the state government and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.