Vizhinjam Port has to take on mighty rivals

Kochi: While the state government is busy hawking Vizhinjam as a transshipment hub for South Asia competing with Singapore, Dubai and Colombo ports, the draft concession agreement prepared by the Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited (VISL) says the port will start with an annual capacity of 0.6 million TEU containers when its first phase is completed in 2018.

This is against the existing capacities of 40 million TEU of Singapore, 16 million of Dubai and 12.5 million of Colombo, the ports with which the state government says Vizhinjam will compete.  

Even the languishing Vallarpadam international container transshipment terminal has a capacity of 1 million TEUs.

TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the basic size of a container and is used to measure container traffic.  

The draft agreement says the capacity of the port will be six lakh TEUs on commercial operation date (which is expected to be in 2018), and the operator is under obligation to augment it to 10 lakh TEUs by 2028.

According to the draft agreement, the operator will have to augment the capacity at his own cost in five years if the throughput reaches 75 per cent of the existing capacity for three consecutive years in any point in time.

The capacities will thus be augmented to 1.5 million TEUs in phase two; 2.2 million TEUs in phase three and 3 million TEUs in phase four.

“The state government will have to invest no money in the expansion of the port,” VISL sources said.

While the VISL authorities points out the provision for capacity expansion, the feasibility report of the project says the traffic through Vizhinjam port will be just above one million by 2028.

It says the port will see a traffic of 1.09 million TEUs in 2028 and 3.2 million TEUs by 2054. So, if one were to take the two data together, the port will handle a traffic of 3 million TEUs in 2054.