Union minister of state for shipping Mukul Roy on Thursday said Haldia operations of the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) will not transfer any funds to the Kolkata unit unless the ministry chalks out a revenue-sharing model among the two.
After meeting KoPT?s acting chairman A Majumdar and Haldia Dock Complex?s deputy chairman Rajiv Dubey on Thursday, Roy said he will hold a meeting with officers of both the Haldia Dock Complex (HDC) and Kolkata Dock System (KDS) on March 23 to sort out the problems of revenue-sharing among the two.
?Revenue-sharing has been a bone of contention between HDC and KDS for a long time. This issue needs to be properly addressed and resolved,? Roy said.
Haldia has been subsidising Kolkata Docks’ operation for over 20 years now, handing out an average of Rs 150 crore to KDS each year. As long as HDC generated surpluses, it had been supporting KDS? operations with subsidies but now that it has started facing losses, there is no way it can subsidise the Kolkata operation, an official said.
HDC will register a loss of Rs 67 crore in 2009-2010 but KDS will require Rs 200 crore at the start of the new fiscal of 2010-2011 to continue its operations.
In fact, in 2008-2009, Haldia Dock Complex registered a surplus of Rs 194 crore and it gave KDS Rs 116 crore for running the operations.
Now that HDC has generated no surplus, the KoPT top management wants funds from HDC?s capital reserve account, meant for capital expenditure only. Haldia Dock Bachao Committee has objected to that and has asked the minister to mediate, an official said. In fact, the Dock Bachao Committee was planning to go on a strike from March 22 but the minister persuaded the workers against it.
Roy said the ministry would shortly release Rs 267 crore to HDC on account of dredging subsidy, which would solve the problem to an extent. But in the last 10 years, HDC has received a total of Rs 2700 crore from the ministry on account of dredging but had to pay a total of Rs 3500 crore to the Dredging Corporation of India and German dredging company HAM. So there is already a funding gap of Rs 800 crore.
Haldia?s business was hit when around 6 million tonne of crude cargo was shifted to Paradip with the commissioning of the Paradip?Haldia crude pipeline. Besides, the low draught condition has compelled it to reduce parcel size of calling vessels.
While in 2008-09, Haldia handled 41.5 mt, in 2009-2010 its handling would not cross 31.5 mt, thus leading to lower revenues, an official said.