JNPT declogging plan unveiled

The government today unveiled a three-point strategy to ease congestion at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port container terminal.

"We have come out with a three-point strategy to deal with the congestion, and declogging will be done in the next seven to 10 days," commerce secretary S N Menon said here.

Menon held a meeting with the concerned authorities in this regard yesterday.

As per the strategy, the piled up containers at JNPT would be shifted to three locations, including the central warehousing container freight station.

The requirement of bank guarantee for removing of containers directly by shipping line has been waived. This would help in speedy lifting of 5,000 containers.

As many as 17,700 containers have been piled up in JNPT, resulting in congestion of one of the country's largest and busiest port. Some containers would also be shifted to Mumbai Port Trust, which has a capacity to accommodate up to 10,000 containers.

Apart from shifting 4,500 containers to central warehousing container freight station, additional 2,000 would be shifted to Vashi.

The government had to take immediate steps to declog the port as it was badly hitting country's exports which has shown over 26 per cent growth in the first five month of this fiscal.