All ports, especially major ports, should focus on Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) and try to live up to the expectations of the customer. And for that, cooperation and coordination among all the stakeholders, especially government agencies, is needed, according to P. Raveendran, Chairman of the Chennai port.
He was chairing a session on port services on Friday, the concluding day of the two-day ports’ conclave of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) nations.
Mr. Raveendran said that in the global supply chain, ports played a vital role and a country’s economic growth and prosperity largely depended on their health and operation.
Cargo movement
Rinkesh Roy, Chairman of the Paradip port, explained the steps taken in the recent years to pave the way for hassle-free cargo movement and evacuation. “We are focusing on infrastructure development, transparency systems and taking care of ecological concerns. Single window system and e-services have played a key role,” he explained.
Containerisation
U.D. Jayatissa, Director (Logistics), of the Sri Lanka Ports’ Authority, explained how the Colombo port had emerged as a major container hub in Asia and the importance of containerisation. “Container vessels are getting bigger and bigger, and all the ports, including Visakhapatnam, which has a container terminal, should focus on this and gear up to handle that kind of cargo and traffic,” he said.
D.K Srinivas, Principal Commissioner of Customs, Visakhapatnam, spoke about the role of Customs in making port operations easy for the customers. U. Sein Win, representative of Myanmar, and Ugyen Tshering, a representative of Bhutan, spoke. HSL Chairman L.V. Sarat Babu spoke about green ports. K. Ramamohana Rao, VPTI Chairman, thanked all the delegates.
Sagarmala project
Sanjay Bhatia, Chairman of the Indian Ports’ Authority and Mumbai Port Trust, explained the importance of the Sagarmala project.
The project addresses critical factors such as enhancing the capacity of the existing ports and building newer ones, port-led development, building a community system for ports and port-led community development, he said.
“There are about 542 projects linked to Sagarmala, and they will generate about 1 crore jobs,” he said.
It will also address the budding sector of cruise development.
“Last year, we had about 40 cruise ships in Mumbai. In the current year, their number has touched 100. In the coming year, we have about 256 ships lined up. Through BIMSTEC we can take this initiative further across the region,” he said.
