Shipping ministry trebles budgetary support demand

The shipping ministry plans to ask for Rs 1,007 crore as budgetary support in 2004-05 for the port sector. This is thrice the Rs 313.5 crore it received this fiscal.

The ministry will demand the hike in budgetary support on the basis of the recently announced Sagarmala project.

The project, aimed at the integrated development of the maritime sector, envisages an outlay of Rs 55,000 crore for the port sector. A total of Rs 100,000 crore has been earmarked over a period of 10 years for the project.

According to the resource generation plan finalised by the ministry for the next fiscal, the outlay for ports is Rs 1,800 crore.

While the ministry plans to generate Rs 637.37 crore internally, it expects to source Rs 116 crore from user agencies like refineries and power plants.

In 2004-05, the annual Plan outlay for the major ports is estimated to be Rs 1347.26 crore. Of this, 22 per cent or Rs 285 crore is to be spent on continuing schemes. The cost of new schemes has been projected at Rs 1061.3 crore.

If the budgetary support is granted, it will come as a big relief for the port sector that has been receiving negligible government funds for the last few years. In fact, the sector received only Rs 150 crore as budgetary support in 2002-03.

In 2004-05, the major projects that will be taken up are the Sethusamudram Canal project, the deepening and widening of the Mumbai harbour and the Jawaharlal Nehru port channel, along with infrastructure projects at the Cochin port as part of the Sagarmala project.

The tentative outlays for these three projects to be financed out of the government's coffers have been pegged at Rs 100 crore, Rs 315 crore and Rs 315 crore, respectively.

The ministry also plans to demand Rs 100 crore for various other activities, like the dredging of ports other than JNPT and Cochin, setting up basic facilities at the ports proposed to be built and contribution towards special purpose vehicles (SPV).

According to the draft Sagarmala project plan, 50 minor ports and 12 major ones are proposed to be built.