Vizhinjam & Vallarpadam -II
This is sent by my brother. He has collected the info and written this.
Vizhinjam port, a Tuglak plan?
It has been a point of argument that whether Vizhinjam should be boosted as a location to build an international container terminal rather than building one at Kochi. Both Kochi and Vizhinjam has their own advantages. Vizhinjam is suited naturally to be developed as a port. To be precise, Vizhinjam is a port that was constructed by the nature itself.
Vizhinjam port is located 16 km south of Trivandrum.
The site offers the following unique advantages:
• Proximity to international shipping route and East-West shipping axis
• Availability of 20m contour within a nautical mile off the coast. Minimal littoral drift along the coast and therefore hardly any maintenance dredging
• Immediacy to national/regional road, rail network
• Flexibility in design and expansion being Greenfield project Close to Thiruvananthapuram city that has an International airport, human resource and social infrastructure
The cost for dredging that will come annually for cochin port is a very small sum when compared to the huge revenue generated fom a project like the proposed container terminal. The main advantage that Cochin ejoys is that it is in a more safer location compared to Vizhinjam. Not only because of strategic facilities but even in a natural disaster like tsunami, remeber, Cochin and Calicut were among the least affected parts of coastal India.
I can quote the words of the Shipping Secretary, Mr D. T. Joseph regarding this issue.
'It is a fact that investment of the order of Rs 1,000 crore is required for the construction of the breakwaters for providing the harbour basin at Vizhinjam whereas the capital investment required for providing the deeper channel at Kochi is Rs 400 crore. The difference in capital investment will be more than sufficient to suffix the cost of maintenance dredging at Kochi.'
His justification for the decision was based on the fact that the basic infrastructure already existed at Kochi for a transhipment terminal and any major investment it succeeded in attracting, either from domestic or foreign players, could be effectively used to fetch proper returns without much delay. But the statistics he quotes are very far from reality.
Although Vizhinjam has the marginal advantage of being closer than Kochi to the trunk sea route between the Persian Gulf and East Asia, it has the deficiency of being away from the hinterland that generates container traffic.
Moreover, Vizhinjam currently lacks a well-developed system of road and rail connectivity, which Kochi enjoys, and it will also be difficult to develop these facilities to meet the requirements of container traffic matching the transhipment requirement, he said.
Further, the much-projected availability of 25 metres water depth at Vizhinjam is actually in the sea, at a distance of more than one nautical mile.
At present, there are no port facilities at Vizhinjam and for developing such facilities, a harbour basin protected from the waves and currents should be created by the construction of a breakwater and requiring substantial investments.
According to the kerala government's official website,
Water depth of 16m to be increased to 18.7m in phased manner, at berth, would allow vessel sizes upto 12000 TEUs. This together with a design capacity of 1.1 million TEUs going upto 4.1 million TEUs would serve the transshipment needs of the region. The initial project cost enveloping state-of-the-art facilities and equipment is estimated to be INR 18.5 billion (approximately US$ 425 million)
Apart from this, the Kerala Ports also agree that they will have to make a SEZ(Special Economic Zone) at Vizhinjam too, that would cost something around a 800 crore again. Whereas Cochin has CSEZ at the side of newly built Seaport-Airport road.
L&T Ramboll conducted a study about Vizhinjam port and found out that, to develope it as a port (Without considering any other facilities), it requires a four stage master plan. If it completes by the projected time, the cumulative cost will be 7359 million rupees. More than 60% of that could be reduced if it is build upon Kochi. And the time required to build and establish a port at Kochi is much shorter compared to what would be needed at Vizhinjam.
Why did Vizhinjam get a boost?
It was only after the proposal of Vallarpadam container terminal, that people started thinking of Vizhinjam. The cochin port is ruled by a seperate port trust and the revenue from it is much higher compared to the gross revenue from all other ports in Kerala. All the other ports are governed by Kerala Ports . So it was they who proposed a plan for Vizhinjam. Neither the Central government nor the Dubai Port has shown an interest in Vizhinjam. They are interested in Kochi. The only problem is from Kerala local politicians who want to get votes of people playing cheap tricks and in Kochi it is hard to make an influence with such acts. Trivandrum would easily fall a prey to these tactics.
And Cochin has the largest shipbuilding and repairing facilities in India. If all these are combined Cochin would be one of the biggest ports in the world.
My final word would be Kochi.
Thanks to independent sources like wikipedia and kerala government official websites. And study report from L&T Ramboll Consultancies.
Vizhinjam port, a Tuglak plan?
It has been a point of argument that whether Vizhinjam should be boosted as a location to build an international container terminal rather than building one at Kochi. Both Kochi and Vizhinjam has their own advantages. Vizhinjam is suited naturally to be developed as a port. To be precise, Vizhinjam is a port that was constructed by the nature itself.
Vizhinjam port is located 16 km south of Trivandrum.
The site offers the following unique advantages:
• Proximity to international shipping route and East-West shipping axis
• Availability of 20m contour within a nautical mile off the coast. Minimal littoral drift along the coast and therefore hardly any maintenance dredging
• Immediacy to national/regional road, rail network
• Flexibility in design and expansion being Greenfield project Close to Thiruvananthapuram city that has an International airport, human resource and social infrastructure
The cost for dredging that will come annually for cochin port is a very small sum when compared to the huge revenue generated fom a project like the proposed container terminal. The main advantage that Cochin ejoys is that it is in a more safer location compared to Vizhinjam. Not only because of strategic facilities but even in a natural disaster like tsunami, remeber, Cochin and Calicut were among the least affected parts of coastal India.
I can quote the words of the Shipping Secretary, Mr D. T. Joseph regarding this issue.
'It is a fact that investment of the order of Rs 1,000 crore is required for the construction of the breakwaters for providing the harbour basin at Vizhinjam whereas the capital investment required for providing the deeper channel at Kochi is Rs 400 crore. The difference in capital investment will be more than sufficient to suffix the cost of maintenance dredging at Kochi.'
His justification for the decision was based on the fact that the basic infrastructure already existed at Kochi for a transhipment terminal and any major investment it succeeded in attracting, either from domestic or foreign players, could be effectively used to fetch proper returns without much delay. But the statistics he quotes are very far from reality.
Although Vizhinjam has the marginal advantage of being closer than Kochi to the trunk sea route between the Persian Gulf and East Asia, it has the deficiency of being away from the hinterland that generates container traffic.
Moreover, Vizhinjam currently lacks a well-developed system of road and rail connectivity, which Kochi enjoys, and it will also be difficult to develop these facilities to meet the requirements of container traffic matching the transhipment requirement, he said.
Further, the much-projected availability of 25 metres water depth at Vizhinjam is actually in the sea, at a distance of more than one nautical mile.
At present, there are no port facilities at Vizhinjam and for developing such facilities, a harbour basin protected from the waves and currents should be created by the construction of a breakwater and requiring substantial investments.
According to the kerala government's official website,
Water depth of 16m to be increased to 18.7m in phased manner, at berth, would allow vessel sizes upto 12000 TEUs. This together with a design capacity of 1.1 million TEUs going upto 4.1 million TEUs would serve the transshipment needs of the region. The initial project cost enveloping state-of-the-art facilities and equipment is estimated to be INR 18.5 billion (approximately US$ 425 million)
Apart from this, the Kerala Ports also agree that they will have to make a SEZ(Special Economic Zone) at Vizhinjam too, that would cost something around a 800 crore again. Whereas Cochin has CSEZ at the side of newly built Seaport-Airport road.
L&T Ramboll conducted a study about Vizhinjam port and found out that, to develope it as a port (Without considering any other facilities), it requires a four stage master plan. If it completes by the projected time, the cumulative cost will be 7359 million rupees. More than 60% of that could be reduced if it is build upon Kochi. And the time required to build and establish a port at Kochi is much shorter compared to what would be needed at Vizhinjam.
Why did Vizhinjam get a boost?
It was only after the proposal of Vallarpadam container terminal, that people started thinking of Vizhinjam. The cochin port is ruled by a seperate port trust and the revenue from it is much higher compared to the gross revenue from all other ports in Kerala. All the other ports are governed by Kerala Ports . So it was they who proposed a plan for Vizhinjam. Neither the Central government nor the Dubai Port has shown an interest in Vizhinjam. They are interested in Kochi. The only problem is from Kerala local politicians who want to get votes of people playing cheap tricks and in Kochi it is hard to make an influence with such acts. Trivandrum would easily fall a prey to these tactics.
And Cochin has the largest shipbuilding and repairing facilities in India. If all these are combined Cochin would be one of the biggest ports in the world.
My final word would be Kochi.
Thanks to independent sources like wikipedia and kerala government official websites. And study report from L&T Ramboll Consultancies.
posted by Dew Drops at 9:08 PM
2 Comments:
I am all for having 2 ports in Kerala. In the new liberalized world if another company feels that it can invest and make returns out of that investment why should we pose a barrier to the same. Anyway in the current scenario govt wont spend the whole amount, they would just be a partner like in eklmport. Then regarding politicians utilizing the issue, i can vouch that the same happened in Vallarpadam also. There was so much of hue and cry from state wide politicians(not only local) as it was delayed and many were crying foul of mumbai lobby. Finally when Vayalar Ravi announced that this is going to become a reality. sad to see that now we have different opinions within the state itself.
Kochi can't and will never compete with Vizhinjam if materialized. Vizhinjam can handle about 6.10 million TEU while combining the whole port capacity in India is about 4.10 million TEU in which Kochi has 0.19 million TEU.If you are weak in grasping the real truth go through the links in which our alien nation has realized the truth.
http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2008/10/33173_space.html
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