CII pitches for modern cargo terminal at MPA

Staff Reporter

Panaji

Close on the heels of members of Goan industry asking for an overall improvement in the infrastructure at the Mormugao Port, Confederation of Indian Industry-Goa on Wednesday demanded a modern cargo terminal at the Vasco port.

A delegation led by CII-Goa chairman Anirudh Agrawal during a meeting with the newly-appointed Mormugao Port Authority chairman N. Vinod Kumar on Wednesday raised the burning issues faced by local shipping companies and requested the setting up of a “modern functioning container terminal with the right handling equipment.”

“The container terminal must have handling equipment both quayside and landside as well as keep adequate back-up land for a container yard, along with demolishing the old sheds,” said Agarwal.

He said that the port must also provide container stacking space as well as explore the utilisation of unused land for optimising port operations. The CII delegation said that there is a need to have a crane for handling of cargo which can be set up in PPP mode. The delegation requested provisioning a berth for the Goan shipbuilding industry for construction of new vessels to leverage economic competitiveness.

The MPA chairman assured the delegation of a solution. An MPA officer is now a member of the CII Goa logistics committee to provide possible solutions.

Earlier, members of GCCI during a meeting with the MPA chairman had taken up the issue of inadequate infrastructure at the port and the difficulties faced by Goan units in exporting cargo. Local industrial units prefer transporting cargo by JNPT, Mumbai due to inadequate infrastructure at the Mormugao port.