Ports to attract private investments

Mumbai/Ahmedabad: While taking its port-led development strategy a step ahead, the Gujarat government hinted that further attention will be diverted to ship-building industry from ship-breaking industry.

At the state Budget, finance minister Vajubhai Vala also announced that next year the government would undertake developmental schemes on existing ports of Gujarat Maritime Board with an expenditure of Rs 175 crore, with a possibility of private investment to the tune of Rs 4,267 crore being made.

The Budget, however, fell short of expectations of the industry players.

“It is for the first time that ports have been mentioned in detail in a Budget. While the government has talked about promoting the ship-building industry, nowhere has it mentioned the promulgation of a ship-building policy, which has been pending since long. Moreover, only port development is not enough. Multi-model activities like better road network to link ports also needs to be developed,” said Vallabh Shah, adviser to ABG Shipping Limited.

The Budget estimates reveal that 160 million metric tonne traffic will be handled from the small ports of Gujarat during next year. Begging to differ with the finance minister, Shah added, “After the port policy in 1995, which generated a traffic of 16 million metric tonne at that time, traffic had grown by 10 times already. It will rather touch the 200million metric-tonne mark in the coming days. Therefore, a ship-building policy should be announced soon to generate similar results.”

Vala added that the government had taken new initiatives for developing ship-building/repairing yards, private ports, jetties, captive jetties, VTMS system, training and introduction of new marine courses and implementation of schemes relating to RO-RO ferry services at 22 coastal areas of the state, which will prove beneficial to development of Sagarkhedu, an ambitious programme for all round development of coastal areas.

On the LNG terminal front, Vala announced that with two new joint venture projects at Mundra and Pipavav, there would now be four functional LNG terminals in the state.