The state steel & mines department has urged the authorities of six ports- Paradeep, Haldia, Dhamara, Visakhapatanam, Gangavaram and Kakinada, through which iron ore produced in the state are exported, to share detailed information electronically from next month.
Under the integrated mines and minerals management system (i3MS) of the department that is going to be operational from June 1, it will be mandatory for these six ports to furnish all export related data and upload it on the system. To facilitate sharing of data, the softwares of these ports and i3MS have been integrated.
"The i3MS is going to be operational from June 1 and we have asked all six ports handling exports of iron ore produced in the state to provide detailed export data every fortnight. The ports will provide lessee wise details and i3MS will track the entire export movement beginning from source to destination. Whichever port fails to comply, its export permit will be frozen”, said D K Singh, steel & mines secretary after reviewing the progress of i3MS project.Except the Paradip Port, none of the other ports are currently sharing information on ore exports.
Peeved over the irregularity in submission of information on ore exports by some of the ports, the Odisha government had sought the intervention of the Centre to ensure that the details of ores received at different ports are supplied to the state director of mines.
The state government had also announced a freeze on export of iron ore fines through the Gangavaram port as the port authorities did not share information on exports.The steel & mines department had earlier urged the authorities of six ports to submit information related to ore exports from these ports to the state director of mines at least once in every fort night for verification of the data with the transit permits issued by the mining offices of the state.
The department had also initiated steps to integrate i3MS software with Railways and its commercial tax wing. The online system of the department will be integrated with that of two zonal railways-East Coast Railway (ECoR) and South-Eastern Railway (SER).
I3MS is an e-governance project being taken up by the department of steel & mines for preparation of database of lessees and automation of transit permits. The software for the project has been developed by Idcol Software.