State-owned IIFCL on 18 December announced that it has sanctioned ₹8,244 crore loans to about 20 projects to help add 836 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of ports capacity, which is one-fourth of India’s total cargo volumes.
As per details, India’s total port capacity is about 2,600 MTPA. Of this, 12 major ports’ cargo handling capacity stood at 1,598 MTPA as of March 2022.
India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd (IIFCL) has been extending its financial support to many strategic port projects, including the Paradip Port, Essar Vizag port, Tuticorin, Krishnapatnam, Karaikal.
“The latest is the Ramayapatnam port, which reinforces our belief in this very important sector and the potential it holds to improve connectivity, bring down logistics costs, and provide a boost to the economy,” news agency PTI quoted IIFCL Managing Director P R Jaishankar as saying.
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He added that with investment in three upcoming ports including Ramyapatnam and Bhavanapadu, the capacity would touch 1,000 MTPA with these ports going on stream in a couple of years.
Ramayapatnam Port in Andhra Pradesh is expected to commence operations next year in December with four berths with 34 MTPA capacity.
“IIFCL, till date, has provided financial assistance of ₹8,244 crore to the port sector. Of this, ₹787 crore was sanctioned to various terminals in 5 major ports and ₹7,465 crore was sanctioned to 15 minor port projects. Most of the projects are operational and presently 3 non major ports are under construction,” he said.
IIFCL has been involved in development of 5 out of 12 major ports and 15 non-major ports in India.
Furthermore, IIFCL will be providing financial assistance of ₹1,000 crore to another greenfield non major port in Andhra Pradesh with proposed capacity of 30 MTPA.
“The ongoing decade could well be a golden decade for the sector with positive government policy interventions, private sector capital infusion, and holistic and inclusive development with efficiency, job creation and innovation,” he said.
The total capital expenditure by both the Centre and state governments in the port sector between FY20 and FY25 is estimated at ₹121,194 crore under the National Infrastructure Pipeline.
For projects executed by the Centre, about 58 identified projects are planned for implementation in the period 2020-25.
So far, the state-owned infrastructure financing firm has sanctioned around 650 projects with a total outlay of ₹11.5 lakh crore and out of them, 500 are public private partnership (PPP) projects.
Source: Hellenic Shipping News
