Shipping Minister GK Vasan informed media persons about his ministry’s plan to ask profit-making major ports to provide capital to Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) for buying dredgers.
The ministry may direct some of the ports to part-finance the purchase of two dredgers. This will be first time that the major ports will fund dredger procurement.
Major ports like Kandla Port, Jawaharlal Nehru port may be asked to contribute funds for this purpose.
Vasan said this after dedicating DCI Dredge XX, a trailer suction dredger of DCI, to the nation.
Dredge XX is the second dredger that DCI launched in the last eight months. The last one was launched at Ennore port in December. A third dredger is expected to join the fleet in February, Vasan said.
DK Mohanty, Chairman and Managing Director, DCI, said the company planned to order two more dredgers costing around Rs 1,900 crore, which the ports would part-fund.
In April, DCI received approval from the ministry to buy three trailer suction hopper dredgers of 5,500 cubic metre capacity each at a cost of Rs 1,570 crore.
The dredgers were financed partly through loans from Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas and partly from the companyÂ’s internal resources.
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