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With just a few weeks more to go in the current financial year, the Visakhapatnam Port (VPT) has handled 50.9 million tonnes of cargo in the ten months of the current fiscal registering a growth of 8.22% compared with 47.1 million tonnes in the corresponding period of the previous year. Moreover, the port hopes to reach 60 million tonne mark by the end of the fiscal and it will be the highest traffic in the last four years.
Pegged at the fifth position out of the 12 Major Ports in terms of cargo handled behind Kandla, Paradip, JNPT and Mumbai Ports, the Vizag Port has seen cargo volumes increase mainly on account of iron ore, container traffic and other cargo with the iron ore cargo doubling to 9.1 mt during April-January 2016-17 as against 4.3 mt in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal.
At the same time, container tonnage increased from 4.1 mt during April-January 2015-16 fiscal to 5.3 mt during the April-January 2016-17. However, the Major Port has witnessed a drop in POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants) from 14.6 mt in 2015-16 to 13.83 mt during the current fiscal.
The increase in POL during the previous fiscal is attributed to the additional crude oil supplied to the strategic crude oil reserves in the port city.
At the same time, both thermal and coking coal dropped during the current fiscal. While thermal coal has dropped from 9.1 mt during April-January 2015-16 to 6.8 mt during April-January 2016-17, coking coal has dropped from 4.6 mt to 3.9 mt, according to port sources.
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