Chennai Port Authority plans development of outer harbour project, after 18 years

CHENNAI : In the light of rapid industrial development in Tamil Nadu and the neighbouring States, the Chennai Port Authority is once again planning to bring back to life the development of the outer harbour project. They will shortly start a study to find out the financial viability of the project.

This project was first proposed way back in 2007 and at that time, the proposal was to ‘develop a mega container terminal at north Bharathi Dock’ whose quay length was as much as 2 km with four Million Twenty Foot Equivalent Unit (MTEU) capacity on a PPP mode at a cost of over ₹3,000 crore. IIT-Madras carried out a technical viability study for this project as well.

Though the Chennai Port Authority floated bids, the project didn’t take off owing to global economic recession, they received a rather poor response. Subsequently, once again in 2013, the Chennai Port restructured the project as ‘development of outer harbour project for handling multipurpose cargoes’ and the estimated cost of this project was revised to ₹5,100 crore. A financial viability study was once again done and they refloated bids in 2014. Since they didn’t receive any response even then, the authorities chose to drop this project.

The project will not only augment connectivity, but also bring additional cargo and will continue to play an active role in overall regional growth; a strong need for capacity addition is felt at Chennai Port, the tender said.