S. K. Mohapatra, CEO, Dhamra Port Company Ltd , the Tata Steel-L&T joint venture that runs a port at Dhamra in Odisha, has welcomed the Indian Railways’ new initiative to attract private investments in rail projects with port connectivity.

“The proposed models hopefully will boost private investments in port Railway projects,” he told Business Line over phone from Bhubaneswar.

DPCL has invested heavily to construct Railway lines of over 62 km between Dhamra port and Bhadrak located on the Howrah-Chennai main Railway line.

Under the proposed policy, the Bhadrak-Dhamra rail link would come under non-government rail model, and DPCL and the Railways would share the revenue after DPCL pays loco and a few other charges to the Railways. The Bhadrak-Dhamra rail link was so far governed by the Railway’s R3 policy which did not get off the ground because of the lack of clarity, so much so that no agreement on revenue-sharing could be signed between the Railways and DPCL.

“Hopefully, all this will now be resolved,” Mohapatra observed.

Meanwhile, for the first time in the last 18 months, Dhamra port’s monthly traffic throughput has exceeded the one million tonne-mark reaching 1.17 million tonnes in October.

This has been possible due to various factors such as improved productivity, handling of iron ore shipment and the diversion of dry bulk carriers from Haldia to Dhamra.

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