In the months to come Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) authorities will appoint road transporters to improve direct port delivery (DPD) efficiency.
The move will help importers in Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Pune, Goa and Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) as these six routes have been identified for DPD.
Explaining about the tender floated recently to appoint road transporters, JNPT chairman Anil Diggikar said, “The transporter will be required to work in a time-bound manner in order to clear the cargo within a duration of 48 hours, failing which the container will be shifted to the designated container freight stations. The cost due to the delay will be recovered from the transporter.”
There are 33 container freight stations and 40 inland container depots at JNPT. A total of 778 importers have been permitted to avail DPD.
Transporters will be appointed on per kilometre, per twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) basis and one transporter per route will be selected.
If a strong transporter is not selected, it may lead to multiple issues including port-side road congestion, increase in the overall port dwell time, co-ordination issues with the stakeholders, etc.
“Due to DPD, an importer saves anywhere between Rs 10,000 to Rs 60,000 per TEU apart from reducing the delivery time for goods. Even customs department is able to clear cargo very fast. Earlier it used to take 9-12 days; now it gets cleared in 5-6 days,” said Dr John Joseph, chief commissioner of customs, Mumbai Zone-II. With the appointment of transporters, the time taken is likely to reduce further.
In the last few months, 19,367 TEUs have been delivered directly to factories or importers, whereas around 16,500 TEUs have been delivered through CFS. Thus, the ratio is 3:2.
Due to the ongoing efforts, the share of DPD, which used to be around 3%, has increased to 17%.[/vc_column_text]
