The Integrated Check Post (ICP), being constructed at Akhaura near Agartala to facilitate trade by land route between Tripura and the adjacent areas of Bangladesh, is to be commissioned shortly.

The builder of the ICP, Land Port Authority of India under the Department of Border Management of the Union Home Ministry, has appointed the public sector Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) as the cargo terminal operator of ICP.

Spread over 11 acres, the ICP will be complete with a covered area having a storage capacity of 4,000 tonnes — 2,000 tonnes each for import and export trade — and more than 7,000 sq.m. of open  yard. The total cost is estimated at R 70 crore including Rs 22 crore of land cost.

Giving this information to Business Line , B.B. Pattnaik, Managing Director of CWC, indicated that the ICP at West Bengal’s Petrapole border (with Bangladesh) would be ready for operation most probably by the middle of 2014.

The truck terminal at Petrapole, being operated by CWC since 2000, would be merged into the ICP when ready.

Cargo terminal operator

Meanwhile, the Union Government has asked CWC to continue as the cargo terminal operator at Atari ICP, located in Punjab on the border with Pakistan, for another year till April 2014.

Pattnaik informed that in 2013-14, CWC proposed to construct an additional storage capacity of 2.5 lakh tonnes at a cost of Rs 90 crore in 12 states. In 2012-13, about 2.35 lakh capacity was created in 14 states at a cost of Rs 76.86 crore.

The capacity utilisation of storage improved to 93 per cent in 2012-13 from 91 per cent in 2011-12. In case of foodgrains, the utilisation jumped from 57 per cent to 60 per cent.

Container throughput

Patnaik conceded that the container throughput in exim trade dropped to 10.96 TEUs in 2012-13 from 11.55 lakh TEUs in the previous year and attributed it to slump in the global trade and the weakening of the rupee.

During the year, CWC handled 74,847 trucks engaged in exim trade and earned a revenue of over Rs 33 crore.

In 2012-13, CWC posted 15.4 per cent growth in turnover at Rs 1,406.7 crore (Rs 1,218.65 crore) and a healthy growth in both PBT (31.5 per cent) and PAT (40 per cent) and therefore declared a dividend of 41 per cent, up from 40 per cent each in 2011-12 and 2010-11.

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