TN plans seven minor ports

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Government plans to set up a chain of seven minor ports to catalyse industrial development across the State.

Addressing the CII TN Vision Summit, the Electricity Minister, Mr Arcot N. Veeraswamy, said the State Government has initiated the process of bringing in private investments for the minor ports, which are to come up at Cheyyur, Marakannam, Manappad, Thirukuvallai, Cuddalore, Thirukadaiyur, and Ennore, where the Cabinet has approved L&T’s project to set up a Rs 1,200-crore ship building and port project, the Minister said.

Minor ports are a key infrastructure in the context of the massive investments planned in power generation capacities. Most of the power plants would depend on coal imported from Indonesia and Australia, and an extensive port infrastructure would facilitate such investments.

The State Government will soon clear proposals submitted by ten companies to set up a total of over 17,400 MW of merchant power projects. An additional 25,000 MW of generation capacity proposed by 15 other companies would also be considered in a few months’ time. These together would account for about 32,000 MW of merchant power projects.

A Rs 25,000-crore Transmission Corporation would be set up to strengthen the infrastructure with Rs 10,000-crore assistance from the Centre, and from financial institutions. IL&FS has evinced interest in investing Rs 10,000 crore in the project. This would help the companies transmit power to the national grid.

With the Centre committing to support solar power projects — it has fixed a power tariff of Rs 15 a unit and agreed to provide a subsidy of Rs 12 with the State Government providing Rs 3 — the Tamil Nadu Government will encourage windmill owners to set up solar power generation facilities on the wind farms.

A State Government team had visited Germany and arranged for bringing in technology that would involve investments of over Rs 14 crore a MW.

The TN Vision Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry was to release a vision report for Tamil Nadu in 2025.