JNPT container traffic down 34% in Apr-Oct

At a time when there are reports of congestion at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, the traffic figures for first seven months of the financial year show a 34 per cent decline in container traffic.

"The decline can also be seen as a fallout of the congestion at the port, because of which it has been unable to handle as much traffic as before," a port official said.

Even the growth in overall cargo traffic and has slowed down, with JNPT showing a 6 per cent increase compared to 14 per cent increase during the same period last year.

The cargo handled by the 12 major ports in India has increased 10.54 per cent during April-October, 2004 compared to 6.54 per cent increase during the corresponding period last year.

While the total traffic at the major ports touched 209.57 million tonnes during April-October 2004 against 189.6 milion tonnes during the corresponding period last year, JNPT recorded 18.9 million tonnes compared to 17.8 million tonnes last year.

The total container traffic grew 12 per cent to 2.4 million Twenty foot equivalent units ( TEUs) from 2.17 million TEUs during April-October 2003. Containers handled by JNPT, however, declined to 7.4 lakh Twenty foot equivalent units ( TEUs) from 1 million TEUs habndled last year.

Continued Chinese demnd for iron ore has pushed the traffic of this cargo to 34.3 million tonnees, a 26 per cent growth over 27.2 million tonnes recorded during the first six months of the previous year.

Even container traffic saw an appreciable increase of 12 per cent on account of renewed demand from the East-Asian nations, specially Russia.

As a result, most of the east coast ports, including Kolkata, Chennai and Tuticorin, have experienced a heavy container traffic.

The total container traffic increased from 2.4 million twenty foot equivalent units ( TEUs) to 2.17 million TEUs during April-October 2003.

The growth in container cargo was 22 per cent for Kolkata, 120 per cent in Visakhapatnnam, ports of Kolkata was 22 per cent, 21 per cent in Chennai and 44 per cent Tuticorin.

Only one eastern port, Cochin, which is also a potential site for an international transhipment terminal, however, experienced a marginal 3.2 per cent decline in the container traffic. High demand for iron ore also led Ennore, which till now exclusively used to deal with coal, to handle 2.3 lakh tonnes of iron ore also.

Meanwhile, JNPT, the only port to figure in top 50 container ports in the world on the basis of throughput, slipped a level in 2003 to the 30th rank, according to an annual survey done by a British journal Cargo Systems.

The port is eight notches ahead of Colombo in Sri Lanka, which is one of the main neighbouring ports in India, apart from Singapore that handles transhipment container traffic headed for India.

According to the survey, JNPT saw a 17 per cent increase in its container traffic compared to 11 per cent growth shown by Colombo.