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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved setting up of a new major port at Vadhavan near Dahanu in Maharashtra at a cost of INR 65,544.54 crore.
Vadhavan port is likely to be developed on the “landlord model”, said an official statement.
It further said, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) will be formed with Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) as the lead partner with equity participation equal to or more than 50% to implement the project.
The statement informed that the SPV will develop the port infrastructure including reclamation, construction of breakwater, besides establishing connectivity to the hinterland under PPP mode by private developers.
The JN port, biggest container port in India is 28th in the world with a traffic of 5.1 million TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units). Even after the completion of its 4th terminal the port will increase its capacity upto10 million TEUs by 2023, and stand as the 17thlargest container port in the world.
According to the statement, “With the development of Vadhavan port, India will break into the countries with top 10 container ports in the world.”
The increasing containerization of cargo in the wake of value-added manufacturing sector makes it important to prepare our port infrastructure for handling import and export to facilitate manufacturing activity.
As per the statement, the Container traffic in the JNPT hinterland when fully exhausted is expected to grow from 4.5 MTEUs currently to 10.1 MTEUs by 2022-25.
Furthermore, after the plans for improving logistics infrastructure fructify and the push for ‘Make in India’ drives greater export and manufacture sourcing in the country, the demand for container traffic will accelerate.
