The government has no plans to divest stakes in maritime major Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and port dredging firm Dredging Corp of India (DCI), a senior official said today.
"As of now, there is no immediate proposal that we are working on. We will have to look at the Corporations' own needs and the government's fiscal requirement. They (SCI and DCI) will manage on their own," Shipping Secretary K Mohandas told reporters here.
In July last year, Shipping Ministry had announced plans to off-load stake in many public sector units, including SCI and DCI. The government holds over 80 per cent stake in SCI and 78.56 per cent in DCI.
"We feel this is the time for Shipping Corporation to acquire more vessels and expand fleet, because there is some advantage in the current market conditions for acquisition of vessels," Mohandas said.
He added India was weak in the area of dredging of ports and DCI needed to enhance its capacity by collaborating with international companies.
"Dredging capacity in India as of now is not adequate so both DCI and the private Indian dregding industry has to definitely grow more. We have to create more terminals to increase dredging capacity," Mohandas said.
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He said DCI plans to place orders for three new dredgers before the end of this fiscal.
"We would also like to build dredger-building capacity in the country. Cochin Shipyard has a proposal to tie-up with one of the major dredger-builders in the world. It is still being discussed," Mohandas said.
The Secretary said cargo traffic handled at India's 12 major ports had jumped 10 per cent in November-December 2008, against the same period previous fiscal.
He said major ports in the country will be able to handle 1.2 billion tonnes of cargo by March 2012. India will close the current fiscal with 605 million tonnes of cargo-handling capacity at 12 state-run ports.
Shares of SCI closed 5.57 per cent down on the Bombay Stock Exchange today at Rs 163.50.
Shares of Dredging Corp of India too nosedived 10.65 per cent to close at Rs 649.90.