Navyug Engg to invest Rs 1900 cr in Astharanga port

Hyderabad-based Navyug Engineering Company Limited plans to invest Rs 1,900 crore in the first phase for setting up of an all-weather port at Astharanga in the mouth of Devi river in Puri district of Orissa.

It has proposed to invest Rs 1,500 crore for the port and Rs 400 crore for railway connectivity. The proposed port at Astharanga will have a cargo handling capacity of 20 million tonne per annum in the first phase. The company will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Orissa government soon.

The state law department had given its concurrence and the approval of the finance department was awaited, sources said.

"The proposal is awaiting the nod of the state finance department and will be sent to the chief minister after the required approval from it. The MoU with Navyug will be signed after that," Priyabrata Patnaik, principal secretary, commerce and transport department, told the media.

The port will be utilised for exporting the finished products from Orissa, supply of coal from Talcher to the south India based steel and power plants, aluminium, alumina, ferro alloys, auto-spares.

Similarly, it would be utilised for import of items like limestone, caustic soda and sulphuric acid. The first phase of the port was expected to be commissioned by 2011, he pointed out.

He said the Centre was targeting a port capacity of 2 billion tonnes by 2016 from 780 million tonne at present.

However, Patnaik, refused to comment on the Navyug Engineering's proposal to set up a power plant close to the proposed port saying it was being processed by a different department.