The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Combined capacity of ports to be increased

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 19, 2007
ePaper


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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Combined capacity of ports to be increased

Staff Reporter

Baalu inaugurates ``Ship-in-campus'' programme

TAMBARAM : Acquisition of new vessels, allocation of large money for investment and improvement of infrastructure are part of plans to increase the combined capacity of major and minor ports in the country to handle 1.5 billion tonnes by the end of the XI Plan, said T. R. Baalu, Union Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, on Saturday.

At present, the total volume of trade handled by 12 major ports and 187 minor ports was 567 million tonnes.

With a 10.44 percentage increase in the volume of trade, ports had to be equipped to handle 1.5 billion million tonnes, Mr. Baalu said.

He said that as part of the Central Government's plans, 286 projects in the port sector would be implemented at a cost of $ 12.8 billionc by 2011-12. In the shipping sector, the Ministry had planned to implement 111 projects worth $ 9 billion by 2025.

``The Union Government would mobilise its resources for carrying out all types of infrastructure improvement works,'' Mr. Baalu said.

He was inaugurating the ``ship-in-campus'' at Vel's Academy of Maritime Education and Training at Thalambur near Sholinganallur.

When the present Government took over at the Centre, the tonnage handled by the ports was 7.05 million gross tonnes and it had increased to 8.41 GMT now, thanks to the introduction of a tonnage tax, the Minister said.

The Government has planned to further increase it by 1.46 MGT by acquiring two very large crude carriers, two container vessels, six tankers and eight cargo vessels, Mr. Baalu said.

Maritime university

On maritime education and training, Mr. Baalu said private players had been in the field since 1997 and today there were 127 institutions, 23 of them in Tamil Nadu.

Work was also on to start a maritime university on 300 acres, the Union Minister said, adding that it would be set up at a cost of Rs. 352 crore in his constituency, south Chennai.

D. T. Joseph, Adviser, Department of Shipping, said the quality of skilled people from India in the maritime sector was among the best in the world. However, this trend should be sustained, he remarked.

Mr. Josesh also called upon educationists to ensure that students, who paid a large sum of fee, got adequate ``sea time'' during the course.

Ishari K. Ganesh, chairman of the institution, A. Chatterjee, Chief Surveyor, Union Government, Shinsuke Iwamoto, Director, Mitsui OSK Lines, Japan, Philip Wake, Chief Executive, Nautical Institute, London, and Richard Speight, Deputy Principal, Glasgow College of Nautical Studies also spoke.

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