The Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways and Deendayal Port Authority have discussed the possibility of restructuring the project a couple of days ago by developing it phase-wise after cancelling the current tender, which has been extended multiple times, a Ministry official said.
The port authority reckons that the current structuring of the greenfield project, with a capacity to handle 18.33 million tonnes (mt) of cargo, has very little scope for success given the huge investments involved in an uncertain market, a second source said.
The project will figure in a meeting called by Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways with top officials of the 12 state-owned major ports on 17 November.
JSW Infrastructure Ltd was the only entity to show preliminary interest in the project. “JSW Infrastructure had put some conditions for participating in the bid, but finally they also backed out,” the source said, adding that the tender has reached a dead end.
“Maybe the demand is less,” said a port industry consultant, on why potential bidders stayed away from participating in the tender.
Besides, the dry bulk cargo terminal run by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ) at Tuna Tekra has a capacity to handle 14 mt. This terminal is expected to handle 10 mt this fiscal. “So, the capacity is still unexplored,” the port industry consultant said.
The port authority also has no legal basis to say that its coal cargo will be diverted to the proposed Tuna Tekra project.
“Deendayal Port Authority cannot do this as a public port. So, there is no cargo guarantee that the port authority can give to the private operator,” the consultant observed.
Further, war has broken out in some places across the globe and the trend of break-bulk cargo getting converted into containerized cargo has also cast a shadow over the project.
Containerisation will rise and container terminals will survive but bulk, break-bulk and multi-purpose cargo may see a decline in the coming years, the consultant added.
In FY22, Deendayal Port handled a lot of break bulk cargo only because there was a container crisis. The gap between the projected traffic and allocated traffic has been estimated based on the traffic forecast from FY 2021 to FY 2030. The projected traffic gap by the year 2026 is 2.85 mt and by 2030 is 27.49 mt.
