The Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) has expressed interest in constructing the proposed Vizhinjam international container terminal, 16 km south of Thiruvananthapuram. The Kerala cabinet on Wednesday entrusted V Surendran Pillai, minister for ports, and the chief secretary with the job of discussing various aspects with SCI.
The government has set up a separate company, the Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited (VISL), and initiated action for the development of infrastructure facilities for the proposed port with an amount of Rs 450 crore. The land acquisition operation is in full swing now and nearly 35 per cent of the process is complete.
The government had originally decided to implement the project on PPP basis and had invited expression of interest (EoI). Thirty-one companies responded and 17 of them were short-listed for submitting the bid.
But later the government abandoned the PPP proposal and decided to develop the project in the public sector. The government has decided to go with the EoI submitted by SCI.
On completion of the Phase-I of the development, the seaport will be able to receive ships of up to 8,000 TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units). The project is conceived in such a way that in the subsequent phase, ships of even 12,000 TEU could easily berth at the port. The projected traffic for Vizhinjam Port under a moderate scenario is 6 million TEUs by the year 2042.
The construction work of the Rs 8,000 crore port infrastructure was originally scheduled to commence in 2009. The government had invited open tenders for the BOT operator, but failed as the bidders quit the project. The central government had not cleared the bid submitted by another company saying that it had links with some Chinese companies.
Private infrastructure company Lanco Infratech had won the bid for the project in 2008, but later skipped. The terminal is just one nautical mile away from the international East - West shipping route.
The port is expected to attract a major chunk of the container transshipment traffic which is now diverted to Colombo, Dubai and Singapore. The site has a natural draft of 20-24 meters and hence requires very less dredging.