Amidst mounting people’s protest Adani Group of Indian multi billionaire business magnet Gautam Shantilal Adani’s ambitious mega port project in s Kerala state is nearing completion for the opening next year, informed official sources said.
India’s Kerala state will proceed “no matter what” with US $900 million port project and is open to deploying federal police if needed to protect it from protesters blocking construction, Indian news agencies reported.
New Delhi is determined to implement strategic plans to compete Colombo port’s dominance of transshipment, although Indian ports are considered vastly uncompetitive vis-a-vis Colombo, or other regional hubs, in terms of tariff levels.
Adani Group’s development of a transshipment terminal at Vizhinjam, a green-field, deep water site about 10 miles south-west of Trivandrum in Kerala state, is directed towards taming Colombo Port in the long run, a senior official of the Sri Lanka Ports Development Authority (SLPA) said.
The local fishing community, led by Catholic priests, has blocked construction of Vizhinjam port by Adani Group for almost four months, erecting a makeshift shelter at the port’s entrance.
The protesters say the huge project causes coastal erosion that has undermined their livelihoods, calling for a complete halt on the construction.
Clashes between police and protesters last weekend injured more than 100 people, including 64 police men Indian media reports revealed.
Gautam Adani, whose empire spans gas and power projects as well as a ports and logistics business valued at some $23.5 billion, has described Vizhinjam as an “unmatched location” on the critical east-west shipping route.
SLPA official also noted that the flow of feeder services from India into Colombo continued to be on schedule. However, the authority said the foreign exchange crisis had crimped the pace of import container clearance from the port, but “this situation is improving”, it added.
Colombo is one of the busiest hub gateways in South Asia. With the Sri Lankan crisis unlikely to fade any time soon, Indian port leaders spot a more “realistic” opportunity to bid on transshipment cargo moving in and out of the region by wooing mainline operators seemingly frustrated with Colombo woes.
The ports of Cochin, Tuticorin and Chennai are leading those efforts taking advantage of the Country’s situation.
Despite India has a huge break bulk cargo market segment which can get containerized. With India building its container handling capacity, this break bulk traffic will gradually get converted into containerized cargo which will help the Port of Colombo to be of greater importance to the Indian trade, SLPA official said
India building its container ports can only complement and supplement our efforts. Therefore expediting port infrastructure investments and improving “Ease of Doing Business” would keep Colombo ahead of competition, he claimed.
