Just four years ago, Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT), with its two cargo handling arms?one in Kolkata and the other at Haldia?was vying for the top slot. Being number two in terms of cargo handling for consecutive three years till 2007-08, KoPT was eyeing the first position in 2008-09 by overtaking Visakhapatnam. But in 2008-2009, it slipped to fifth, and then the decline started.
IOC’s Paradip-Haldia pipeline took away 6 million tonnes of crude cargo from Haldia. Now, Dhamra, poised to be operational by the end of this month, is expected to take away another 5-6 mt. KoPT, at present, is far away from being ranked among the 12 major ports and there are already talks going on in the ministry in terms of converting Haldia, the main cargo handling arm of KoPT, into a minor port. Shipping ministry officials find Haldia ineligible day by day to handle big ships. Haldia, officials say, has lost all economic viability.
The dredging subsidy, as S Hazara, the Shipping Corporation of India chairman, points out, is at a ?prohibitive level?.
The Union government has spent Rs 3,500 crore in the past 10 years to dredge the shipping channels of KoPT, but even without taking the yearly dredging subsidy into account, Haldia has been unable to generate surplus in 2009-10 (sources say it has registered a loss of Rs 67 crore this year). Taking the dredging subsidy into account, KoPT has been a loss-making port for a long time even when it was the second-largest port in terms of cargo handling. But keeping the port alive was important because it was the only port serving the large hinterland covering the entire east, north-east, Nepal and Bhutan.
With Dhamra this will change, and it’s another nail in Haldia’s coffin. In fact, KoPT’s cargo handling came down from 57.33mt in 2007-08 to 54.05 million tonne in 2008-2009 to 46.295 mt in 2009-2010.