Paradeep Port Trust (PPT) is likely to sign the concession agreement for the proposed new deep draught coal berth with back up facilities by the middle of September.
Though the agreement was expected to be signed by the end of August this year, it will be delayed by a couple of weeks owing to litigations pertaining to the tender conditions.
“The matter is pending before the Orissa High Court and the judgement is scheduled in the first week of September. The concession agreement is likely to be signed in the middle of next month,” K. Raghuramaiah, chairman, PPT told Business Standard.
The coal berth will be constructed in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode on Build-Own-Transfer (BOT ) basis at an investment of about Rs 387crore.
Though PPT floated tender for the project, one of the applicants Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) moved the Supreme Court against the tender conditions making it ineligible to develop the project. The Supreme Court has referred the matter to the Orissa High Court, sources said.
“We had the requisite qualifications for the project and our material handling with PPT is about 2 million tonne per annum. However, the tender conditions were aligned and dis-aligned in a particular way to make JSPL ineligible in the process”, a senior official of the company said.
Since the company is putting up a mega steel plant in the state, a dedicated berth is necessary. So instead of having a port of its own, the company has decided to work with the state government and PPT to have a dedicated berth. Given the annual material handling of about 2 million tonne by the company, it should have been given the chance, the official argued.
Meanwhile, PPT has taken up the work for deepening the channel at an investment of Rs 253.36 crore. The work has been awarded to Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) and it is now in progress. The work is likely to be completed in March 2010.
After deepening of channel, the port will be in a position to handle cape size vessels up to 1,25,000 DWT. On completion of the project, the depth of the entrance channel and approach channel will increase from 13 metres to 17 metres and 15 metres to 18.7 metres respectively.
