Country's largest container port JNPT today reported a 20 per cent increase in its net surplus after tax for financial year 2016-17 at Rs 866.02 crore and announced investments of Rs 16,000 crore over next few years.
"Our net surplus after tax grew because of expenditure management measures. We were also able to post a 19.45 per cent growth in the net surplus before tax at Rs 1,303.89 crore," its chairman Anil Diggikar told reporters here.
The port, which handled 4.5 million standard container units of cargo during the fiscal which makes it the 32nd biggest in the world, saw a marginal increase in operating income at Rs 1,677.90 crore.
The operating expenditures grew 13.76 per cent to Rs 788.49 crore.
Of the three terminals, one is operated by the port itself while two are by private partners. JNPCT, the state-run terminal, registered a 7.33 per cent growth in cargo as against 4 per cent for private operators in the country.
The port's deputy chairman Neeraj Bansal said the port is in various stages of undertaking works entailing an investment of over Rs 16,000 crore.
This includes a Rs 3,000 crore six laning of a highway to the port, the Rs 8,000-crore fourth terminal and a Rs 2,000 crore dredging to increase the channel's draft to 15 metres.
Diggikar said at present, the port is in talks with the Exim Bank and Singaporean lender DBS for arranging finance for the dredging project slated to start soon.
JNPT will continue to use the successfully tested external commercial borrowing route where the interest rates are a fraction of domestic borrowing, Bansal said.
It borrowed USD 400 million from SBI (USD 300 million) and DBS (USD 100 million) at a rate of around 3.50 per cent against its dollar receivables last year.
Diggikar said work on the fourth terminal, which will more than double the capacity to catapult the port into the top 10 in the world, is going on schedule and exuded confidence in commissioning the first phase by January 2018.
He said all the reclaiming has been done already and a berth has been constructed. In the next few months, support infrastructure like cranes will be fixed, he said.
Concession for the project was awarded to Port of Singapore Authority in 2014. The second phase will be completed by 2021-22.
Bansal said the port has undertaken a slew of measures to ease cargo handling, including the direct port delivery and the direct port exports which is considerably reducing the turnaround time and costs for the EXIM trade.
The port was able to reduce the dwell time for imports to 43 hours from last fiscal's 58 hours, while for exports, the same has gone down to 78 hrs from 88 hrs.
Diggikar said these average dwell times are comparable with the global averages now.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
