Even though Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) remained fully operational as part of essential services during the lockdown, it reported lower throughput in April 2020 as compared to April 2019 on account of the impact of COVID-19 outbreak.
During April 2020, JNPT registered a throughput of 2,83,802 TEUs in container handling against 4,48,286 TEUs in April 2019.
While the import container volume of April 2020 was 80% of the imports handled in April 2019, the overall throughput was 63% of the volume handled during April 2019, port authorities said.
JN Port handled total of 167 vessels in April 2020 and the overall turnaround time improved to 33 hours from 39 hours.
JNPT said it had taken various measures to limit the impact of the outbreak while protecting the trade channel from any disruption. The port announced an extension of waiver/remission/relaxations at all the Container Terminals at JN Port from April 15 to May 3,2020.
Sanjay Sethi, chairman, JNPT said, “In the month of April JNPT handled 499 container trains, making it the highest number of container trains handled in a particular month. This also resulted in increasing the rail co-efficient during the month to 22.39 % against the previous financial year’s monthly average of 16.04%.”
With factories in the hinterland are now opening up due to the revised lockdown norms, exports are picking up, port authorities said.
