Meeting of Senior Officers on Maritime State Development Counci

The Secretary, Ministry of Shipping, Shri K. Mohandas today chaired a meeting of senior officers on Maritime State Development Council (MSDC) in Chennai today. The Secretary emphasised the need for ports to augment capacity and increase it to several times more than the present capacity. This he said would help in curbing all kinds of delays and queuing at ports.

A concerted effort was needed by all the ports to push up the port capacity which is now in the range of one billion tonne. The Ministry of Shipping is formulating a decadal action plan which envisaged an annual growth of 10 per cent in port traffic. The Indian ports would have to handle traffic of about 2.5 billion tonnes by 2020. So the port capacity should do up to at least 3.5 billion tonnes so they are geared up to handle this traffic.

In this exercise the major, the non-major and the minor ports have a big role to play. The State Government too increase their participation and promotional efforts by creating an investment friendly environment for PPP projects in port development.

The contribution of non-major ports in cargo handling was approximately 30% of the total traffic handled by Port Sector in 2008-09. With the emergence of large private investments, the cargo handling capacity at minor Ports has increased significantly. The total capacity of the entire port sector of the country was proposed to be increased to 1500 MT by 31.3.2012, the end of 11th Five Year Plan. The capacity of both the major and the non-major ports has significantly increased and the combined capacity of all major and the non-major ports will cross the milestone of 1 billion tonne in the current year.

The meeting also discussed the issues for constitution of State Maritime Boards, mechanism to curb environmental hazards in ports, creation of no-fishing zones and traffic lanes at ports, vessels traffic management service at indian ports to monitor traffic, security at ports, preparation of contingency plans for accidents like oil spills, a workable solution for insurance coverage of vessels etc.

The MSDC meeting will be held tomorrow and will be chaired by the Minister for Shipping, Shri G.K. Vasan. It will also be attended by Shri Mukul Roy, MOS for Shippin