Believe it or not, Planning Commission?s mid-term appraisal process for the 11th Five Year Plan has discovered that the shipping ministry has no authentic data on investments made in the ports sector since April 1, 2007. The 11 th Plan has a targeted total investment of Rs 57,728 crore to expand capacity of major ports by March 31, 2012, of which private sector was to invest Rs 36,868 crore and the rest was to come from internal resources of ports and budgetary support.
Even as the shipping ministry and the country?s 12 major ports are going about awarding work for capacity addition, proper record-keeping is lacking. ?The ministry has some rough figure on investments in the sector but that could not be relied upon for the mid-term review of the Plan. Planning Commission has sought authentic data from the ministry,? a government official, who is involved in the exercise, told FE.
After the stern reminder from the commission last week, the shipping ministry has now planned a series of meetings with port trusts. ?We are going to meet the port trusts and ask them for investment data at the earliest. The same will be available to Planning Commission in a month,? a senior official in the shipping ministry said.
The data provided by the port trusts show nearly Rs 20,000 crore have been invested in major ports until now. But the ministry is not convinced with the figure. ?The investment has not taken place as was envisaged in the plan. But by our estimation, it should be higher than what the trusts have told us,? the official said.
A senior official of Indian Ports Association, a society of major ports of the country, said IPA also does not have any data to corroborate the statistics given by individual ports to the ministry. ?We don?t carry such data. The data on investments should be available with the Shipping Ministry,? the official said. Interestingly, IPA claims to be a prime source of information on the functioning of major ports and says it carries data on port productivity, available facilities and financial results.
Of the planned investment, a majority was envisaged for 276 projects under National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP), seeking to increase the port capacity by 410 MT by the end of 2011-12. However, only 47 NMDP projects costing Rs 5,496 crore have been completed until now, while work is in progress on 71 projects worth Rs 16,488 crore. The ministry has planned to award work on 17 projects this year, while 21 other projects have been dropped from the programme.