 "New land policy to help Chennai, Ennore ports attract investment")
So far, ports were not allowed to make long or medium term lease arrangements for their lands and could sign agreements for only 11 months, which discouraged companies from making long-term investments in the land provided by ports.
“The new land policy has cleared a major bottleneck, which was preventing companies to invest in the land. We have lost around Rs 226 crore in terms of iron and coal business and 50 per cent of the available land with us are vacant now. We expect Rs 200-250 crore to come from leasing, combining the throughput, now,” said Atulya Misra, chairman, Chennai Port Trust.
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The Port Trust, which has Rs 66 crore of its Rs 650 turnover from leasing of land, expects the new policy to compensate the loss it made when it lost the business of coal and iron ore earlier after the court banned handling of these materials at the port.
It has around 800 acre, of which 300-400 acre is water front and around 400 acre is land area. Of the land area, leaving infrastructure facilities like road and railways, 30-50 per cent is vacant. The port expects interest to come from industries, which are looking for covered areas, like warehouses and covered car parking spaces from car exporters among others.
The Ennore Port, on the other hand, was in the process of acquiring around 730 acre from the salt department as it did not have vacant land ready for leasing, said MA Bhaskarachar, its CMD. The procedures of land acquisition is expected to complete within a month or two. The policy would help it attract companies in exim operations. “At present, we have 2,000 acre and almost all are either allotted or earmarked for future projects.” he said. It expects to invest around Rs 500 crore for acquiring the land.