Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) Chairman & Managing Director Anil K. Gupta on Thursday said the corporation decided to set up a mega a multimodal logistic park in the city.
In his address at the inaugural of the two-day East Coast Maritime Business Summit here, Mr. Gupta said CONCOR’s Container Freight Station (CFS), now under construction in the city, would be ready for operations by December.
Stating that the future belonged to container traffic and growth in manufacturing and agriculture sector, he said CONCOR had unveiled a grandiose plan for an investment of Rs.9,000 crore – Rs.6,000 crore on logistic parks and the balance on CFS in the current five-year plan.
Of the Rs.9,000 crore, CONCOR would prefer to development of logistic parks and terminals in Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Of 15 CFS contemplated, nine would be located in the East Coast involving a total investment of Rs.1151 crore. Three of the CFS proposed during the five-year plan would come up in Andhra Pradesh. At present, CONCOR has 62 terminals.
Growth rate
The investments in the logistic infrastructure would pave the way for emergence of liquid cargo, steel and automobile hubs. He said the economy slowdown had hit adversely the projected growth in the logistic sector.
The growth rate of 9 per cent during past two to three years was not a solace to industries as 58 per cent of GDP had been contributed by the service sector and not much was happening in agriculture and manufacturing due to variety of factors. Only agriculture and manufacturing could largely provide traffic, he opined.
Mr. Gupta said exports were hit by slowdown and pointed out that imbalance in imports and exports were bad for the economy. He said due to good show in west coast, special trains were being run to carry export cargo to the ports in Gujarat. He said the west coast had an overwhelmingly high share of market compared to the east coast and called for strategies for a level-playing field.
