August 11, 2020: The coronavirus pandemic outbreak negatively impacted overall traffic at the country’s largest container port JNPT by 26 per cent year-on-year till July, but it expects an improvement going forward, a top official has said.
The pandemic, which brought all economic activities to a near-halt for almost two months, has also forced the port to extend timeline for certain projects by three months, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust Chairman Sanjay Sethi told PTI.
“The overall traffic at JNPT declined 26 per cent between March-July. So, the COVID impact has been 26 per cent year-on-year. Within that, the silver lining is that in July, we have seen an improvement of over 19 per cent,” Sethi said.
The port reported a 19 per cent spike in overall traffic to 4.85 million tonnes in July over June, with container traffic rising to 3,44,316 twenty-foot equivalent units.
“Till June, things were not so good, but July has been much better. Exports, which had suffered during April and May on account of restrictions on movement owing to a complete lockdown, is back to pre-COVID level in July.
“And things can improve further from here. We are expecting import will also be back to normal from this month,” Sethi said.
He said there was a spurt in exports after announcement of lockdown relaxations in May because of the pent-up demand, but then it went down a little as factories took some time to become functional.
“Now July definitely shows that factories are operating, that is the only way we could be getting so much cargo,” Sethi said.
He, however, said JNPT continued functioning even during the lockdown period, adding, “we did manage even in those worst of times.”
Sethi said the timelines for certain projects, including those under Bharatmala project, have increased by three months owing to various issues in the wake of the pandemic.
“Even bids process management tends to face problems as people are working from home with certain constraints,” he said.
Sethi, however, added that the units in which work had already started did not have any impact.
The Rs 7,900-crore fourth terminal project of JNPT will raise the cargo handling capacity of the port by 50 per cent.
The work on Jalna and Wardha dry ports is on and infrastructure is getting completed, adding that at least the main part of the Inland Container Depot (ICD) will start functioning by December.
Source: Economic Times
