M. Beena, the first lady chief executive of Cochin Port, who stepped down as chairperson on Tuesday, successfully steered the port on the path of recovery and progress during a challenging five-year tenure, when operations were hit by the pandemic and the Ukraine war.
Beena was instrumental in making Kochi a tourist and cruise hub for peninsular India. She also espoused the idea of outer harbour development.
It was during her tenure that the port emerged as a sought-after cruise destination, both for domestic and foreign cruise calls. A total of 6,345 foreign and 30,058 domestic tourists visited Cochin Port on-board 31 cruise calls, 16 foreign and 15 domestic, during 2022-23. It emerged as an important source market for domestic cruises and facilitated embarkation of 2,000 domestic passengers on average during each call in FY 2022-23, as compared to 1,555 passengers on average in 2021-22.
Business volumes grew 21 per cent from 29.14 million tonnes of cargo handled in 2017-18, to 35.26 million tonnes in 2022-23. It achieved its highest turnover of Rs 763.56 crore, negotiated with mainline operators for diversion of 33 calls, and handled 25,402 TEUs between November 2020 to March 2021, during congestion at Colombo Port.
The pre-berthing detention of vessels fell by 52.22 per cent, from 12.67 hours in 2018-19 to a mere 6.04 hours in 2022-23. The turnaround time reduced by 5.11 per cent from 35.21 hours to 33.41 hours, the average stay at berth reduced to 1.16 days, as against 1.23 days, with a marked 7.35 per cent increase in output per ship berth-day from 22,839 tonnes to 24,517 tonnes.
The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Wateways awarded the port the ‘Sagar Shreshta Samman’ for the lowest turnaround time for a container port in 2022-23. A new performance-based concessional tariff scheme for container vessels was introduced, which helped in the introduction of new service connections.
On the financial front, operating profit doubled to Rs 338.13 crore in 2022-23, from Rs 159.58 crore in 2017-18. The Pension Fund has grown to Rs 853.01 crore from Rs 130.78 crore in 2017-18, thanks to a substantial allocation.
To reduce dredging costs, which constitute a major chunk of the port’s expenditure, steps were taken to undertake need-based dredging only.