Prepared roadmap to ramp up port capacity to over 3300 MTPA by 2025: Mandaviya

The government has prepared a roadmap to increase the country's port capacity to over 3,300 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) by 2025, Parliament was informed on Thursday. The move is part of the National Perspective Plan (NPP) for the Sagarmala Programme, Minister of State for Shipping Mansukh Mandaviya said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.

An analysis of nation-wide end-to-end logistics flows of all key commodities at ports was carried out based on which NPP for the Sagarmala Programme was prepared in April 2016, he said. As part of the NPP, a roadmap is developed for increasing Indian port capacity to 3,300 plus MTPA by 2025.

The minister further informed that master planning of 12 major ports has been carried out and 95 capacity expansion and port modernizations projects have been identified. "Major ports capacity has been re-rated for global benchmarks as per berthing policy 2016 and effective capacity has increased by 293 MTPA after re-rating. Global benchmarks have been adopted to improve the efficiency and productivity for major ports and 116 initiatives have been identified to unlock 100 MTPA of capacity at major ports," Mandaviya said.

An action plan for coastal shipping has also been prepared by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in September 2019, the minister said. The plan includes recommendations concerning infrastructure creation required to increase the use of coastal shipping in India, he added.