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Visakhapatnam Port is looking for sustaining its growth momentum and increasing its cargo significantly during the current year. “Our efforts on aggressive marketing, incentives offered in terms of levies and improvement in efficiency parameters as per recommendation of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have paid off well,” Visakhapatnam Port Trust Deputy Chairman P.L. Haranadh informed recently.
The port handled 44.7 million tonne till December 25 and is expected to achieve 61 million tonne, the target set for 2016-17 compared to 57 million tonne handled last fiscal, an increase by four million tonne. Till date, it handled a throughput of 3.3 million tonne over the corresponding period last year. By year-end, it is likely to go up to four million tonne.
“We have received a growth rate of eight per cent in cargo volume, which we will continue in the next fiscal also,” he said. The port was successful in putting a stop to dip in cargo, which was witnessed during the past three to four years.
The port received iron ore of 3.36 million tonne as on date last year which went up to 7.87 million tonne, an increase by 4.1 million tonne. This was due to revival of export agreement by the MMTC with the Governments of Japan and South Korea.
Aggressive Marketing
Admitting that the formation of Business Development Team to understand the customers’ requirements have led to adhering to world-class benchmarking, he said container traffic increased significantly from 3.5 million tonne to 4.75 million tonne during the calendar year.
Other cargoes mainly gypsum, bauxite ore, petroleum coke and manganese ore increased from last year’s 6.9 to 8.4 million tonne. Cargo handling and railway terminal charges were slashed by 50 per cent. In addition to this, the port is offering additional 50 per cent making it zero charge if the client achieved an incremental growth of 20 per cent.
Mr. Haranadh said as per the report prepared by the BCG under the initiative of VPT Chairman M.T. Krishna Babu, the pre-berthing detention time of ships had been cut from 1.7 day to 0.7 day and turnaround time from 4.2 days to 3.7 days. “Most of the delay in berthing is taking place due to documentation problem.
If everything is ready, we are ready to berth a vessel in two hours as we believe that an hour saved is not mere statistics but it helps the clients to save crores of rupees.”
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