DCI to buy two more dredgers

State-owned Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) will be acquiring two dredgers "� one trailer suction and one cutter suction dredger "� at an investment of close to Rs 650 crore.

The two dredgers will join DCI's fleet by 2007. The corporation currently has 10 trailer suction dredgers and two cutter suction dredgers, which the corporation uses for the maintenance dredging works and capital dredging works.

DCI, which earned a foreign exchange of Rs 60.61 crore in 2004-05 by chartering two dredgers to Bahrain-based companies, expects to bag quite a few foreign dredging orders in the current fiscal.

It has called for expressions of interest from foreign dredging companies to form joint ventures, special purpose vehicles and alliances.

"We have short-listed two companies based out of Dutch and Belgium. We plan to bag foreign works with the help of these companies," Neerav Kumar Gupta, chairman and managing director of DCI, told Business Standard.

The corporation is also contemplating re-entering the inland dredging field.

"Due to lack of inland dredging works in the country, we disposed of all our small dredgers a few years back. If the government takes up the National Maritime Development Project (formerly called Sagaramala project), we plan to buy some small dredgers to take up inland dredging works," Gupta said.

DCI is contributing Rs 30 crore to the Sethusamudram project as equity. "We expect good amount of dredging works in this project too," he added.