The Giant called JNPT

Jawaharlal Nehru Port has made a name as the container destination in maritime India. But delays in capacity addition and quality of service besides other pressing bottlenecks need to be plugged to navigate the destiny of this mighty Maratha harbour.

by Radhika Rani G.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Port has indeed taken India into the league of Asia’s leading container ports. Ranked as the 24^th largest port in the world and the topmost container port in India handling 56.5 per cent market share, the port today grapples with issues of space, expansion, capacity, connectivity, quality and perhaps bureaucracy. Endless reams have been written on these issues from time to time. However, the promise of a potential revenue generator can prompt the powers that be to endow the Arabian waterfront to make waves and not let JNPT turn a giant pity! 

The somber signs are already showing in exim trade as Nhava Sheva is literally bursting at the seams operating at nearly 107 per cent of the combined capacity of its three terminals – the JNPCT, NSICT and GTI – with insufficient infrastructure. “Service optimisation is nil,” says Capt Deepak Tewari of The Container Shipping Lines Association. “I cannot bring an ideal size of 8,000-TEU ship here because of draft constraints,” he rues.

The root for such disquiet, the maritime fraternity admits, lies at the policy making level where decision makers have paid little attention to infrastructure building and capacity expansion initiatives despite the signs of a growing economy driven by exports and imports. 

However, the Port Trust Chairman L Radhakrishnan hopes to turnaround the port, in two and a half years. With a 14-metre draft in the first phase and an ambitious 16.5-metre draft in the second, he says JNP can take in 8,000-12,000 TEU vessels. Sounds wishful thinking as the long-delayed dredging programme was mired in tentacles of red tape and resistance. But the special purpose vehicle formed with JNPT holding 87.5 per cent stake and MbPT the rest, at a cost of Rs 1,400 crore, will fast-track the deepening of the shipping channel.

The genuine issues, as the Port Trust Chairman L Radhakrishnan narrates in the following interview, can be weeded out by undoing what has been done – by working on the restrictive policies and regulations. The policies such as TAMP are more monopolistic than money-generating and need to be relooked. To add to this are land acquisition hurdles and fears of corporatisation among workers.

For now, things are easier said than done. Because the chairman and his group of officers, despite working relentlessly to take the port to new heights, yes to the Navaratna status, are forced to put up with delays beyond their control. But sheer optimism is the name of the game and the team is all game to make the port the Big Giant that it has set out to be.