The much awaited announcement of relaxation in the Cabotage rules for the Vallarpadam terminal is likely to herald a new era in the container transhipment business from the region.

The Cabinet announcement assumes special significance as far as Kerala is concerned particularly on the eve of the Prime Minister’s visit to Kochi next week for the much-hyped ‘Emerging Kerala’ investors meet. It has been welcomed by the industry and trade at large.

The fledgling International Container Transhipment Terminal at Vallarpadam can look forward to doing more business in transhipment, now being carried out mainly through Colombo and Salalah.

Colombo Port handles a transhipment throughput of 2 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) from India. However, the ICTT is currently doing only a meagre transhipment business of 20,000 TEUs a year. This is expected to go up significantly with the relaxation of the law.

Hub for transhipment

The shipping community here is of the view that the Vallarpadam terminal was conceptualised as a ‘transhipment hub’ to offer credible competition to other transhipment hubs. Using ICTT for transhipment would definitely translate into several benefits for all the players in the logistics chain.

Besides, the shipping lines would be able to rationalise their ship deployments. Rationalised ship deployments and lower operating costs would provide overall savings to the export-import trade.

P. Narayan, President of the Cochin Chamber of Commerce and Industry pointed out that through this change, international mainline vessels, which tranship Indian containers through international transhipment ports can now commence services to Vallarpadam since feeder vessels will now become available to tranship containers from Vallarpadam. Delays and the consequential financial burden due to a lack of feeder vessels will now become a thing of the past. The need to rely on the limited Indian feeder vessels can now be overcome and the congestion experienced at the terminal will ease, he said.

P. M. Mohammed Haneef, Working President of Cochin Port Staff Association, said the move would improve throughput at the terminal.

Haneef, who is also the Trustee of the Port Trust Board said the Government should also take appropriate decisions on the proposal to permit the Board to procure a dredger for maintenance dredging requirements so as to reduce cost. Otherwise, the Government should be in a position to provide grant for dredging requirements to Kochi as has been extended to Kolkatta Port Trust, he added.

> sajeevkumar.v @thehindu.co.in

Related Topics