DP World's arm to start work in Kerala by Dec

The civil work of the sunrise infrastructure project, Vallarpadam International Trans-shipment Container Terminal (VITCT), in Kerala, will start in the last quarter of current year, according to sources at India Gateway Terminals Private Ltd (IGTPL), the Indian arm of Dubai Ports World (DP World).

DP World has short listed six companies, from India and abroad, for submitting the tender document. The company is planning to complete the tender filing process by August and the contract will be awarded soon, sources said.

The Rs 2,118-crore project, designed to be developed on a Build-Operate-Transfer basis, will be a boon to the export industry not only of Kerala, but all south Indian states. It is estimated that the project cost might escalate to Rs 3,000 crore thanks to the time lag and extra piling work needed.

The Cochin Port Trust (CPT) had mooted the idea of an international terminal way back in the early 1990s. CPT had estimated a savings worth Rs 6,000 to Rs 16,000 per container for Indian exporters.

Currently, a substantial percentage of India's container traffic is trans-shipped via third country load centres at Colombo, Singapore and Dubai. Interestingly, the port had invited Expression of Interest for the project in 1998 for establishing the terminal on joint venture basis. But due to a bunch of reasons including absence of political will, the back waters of Kochi still flow quietly.

According to DP World officials most of the issues has been sorted out and some solution would be reached by the end of the current year. The deadline for commissioning the terminal is April, 2009.

Meanwhile, the earth-filling work in the project area has been completed and 275,000 cubic metre of earth has been filled so far, which is the base for commencing the construction work.

There are bottlenecks in Kerala's mega project like acquisition of land for rail and road connectivity to the terminal. According to the agreement CPT has to provide such connectivity before the commissioning of the terminal.

Meanwhile, the performance of the Rajiv Gandhi Container Terminal (RGCT) has improved considerably due to better deployment of work-force and availability of more equipment.

The terminal has handled 56,362 twenty feet equivalent units (TEU) between April and June, up by 9 per cent over the same period in the previous year.

A sharp reduction has been attained in the turnaround time of vessels at the terminal, according to a top officer. Turn around time had been reduced from 35 hours in March, 2005 to 19 hours now. IGTPL plans to achieve 23 per cent increase in container handling during the current fiscal.

In total, the terminal handled 226,571 TEU, up by 13 per cent in 2006-07.