The lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus has begun impacting cargo handling business at Visakhapatnam port, with a 30% shortfall in the first 10 days of April, compared to the same period in 2019, a senior official of Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) said.
“Cargo handling operations have been hit because of the lockdown because our major clients have stopped using our facilities. We are open for business, but our clients have to come back,” P L Haranadh, deputy chairman of Visakhapatnam Port Trust, said.
According to Haranadh, with the government planning to extend the lockdown till 30 April, he expected cargo throughput to remain slow for the rest of the month.
The port reported a robust growth in cargo throughput in 2019-20, handling 72.72 million tonnes (MT) compared to 65.30 MT in the previous year, an increase of 11.45%. The port stands third in cargo handling among all major ports in the country, after Kandla in Gujarat and Paradip in Odisha.
“This is the best ever cargo handled in the 86 years of Visakhapatnam since 1933. It surpassed the nine-year-old record of 68 MT handled by the port in 2010-11, when private ports like Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam were not active.” Haranadh said with the decreased cargo throughput, the port had temporarily reduced its non-essential staff. “We have not reduced the number of staff on the port’s operations side, to ensure that the ships that berth at the port are attended to immediately,” he said.
