India is aiming to improve its manufacturing competitiveness with the “Make in India” program. Ports are the catalyst of socio-economic development and aid long term growth track of the economy. The Government is making an attempt towards developing ports into manufacturing eco-systems which bring trade as well as investments. Ports also aid in generating employment and economic and industrial growth of an entire nation. The major ports are operating well in terms of financial statements, despite several drawbacks. It also indicates the significance to improve on these insufficiency at the earliest so that the stakeholders, especially the users are assisted by the improved efficiency in terms of cost and time.
The next part of growth in cargo capacity handled is expected to be led by the containers segment. As the global container and freight movement have been slacking in the past two years. We expect the same to recover globally over the next 2-3 years. In near future level of containerization pick-up to handle wider variety of cargo in India, since handling and transportation becomes faster and easier. The Sagarmala Programme aiming to increase depth of major ports so as to handle the mega vessels in the next 2-3 years. We expect Cargo container handling to reach 25 million TEU by 2020-21 across major and non-major ports from the current 13 million TEU. Non-major ports are expected to add higher capacity in the segment.
Gujarat – Nerve Centre of India's Port Sector
Gujarat has been continuously moving forward in the maritime trade of India due to its strategic advantage Gujarat can easy accessed to Middle East, Africa and Europe. Out of 47 ports located along its Coastline, 46 are non-major ports while one port, viz. Kandla is a major port. Gujarat constitutes 32% of the total national cargo handled by non-major ports. During the FY 2007–2016, cargo traffic in Gujarat increased at a CAGR of 10.17 per cent, with the cargo volume handled reaching 440 MMT in FY16. Favourable policies of the Gujarat government helped the state in gaining private investors interest in port related activities. Kandla port handled 499.68 million tonnes of cargo traffic, during April 2016 to January 2017. Overall India’s cargo traffic increased by 7.14 percent privately operated greenfield ports in India.
