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A file photo of a container vessel berthed at Chennai port.

Mamuni Das

New Delhi, April 18 Several Indian shipping firms, including the public enterprise Shipping Corporation of India, plan to approach the Shipping Ministry requesting for a change in technical qualifications required for developing the container terminals at Ennore and Chennai ports.

The technical parameters in the request for qualification (RFQ) document of Chennai and Ennore ports are set in a manner that would make it difficult for most of the Indian shipping firms to have any significant stake in a consortium that crosses the technical qualification stage and is able to bid financially. The RFQ is based on the policy guidelines issued by the Government for public private partnership (PPP) projects to be taken up on a build-operate-transfer basis. “Shipping experience has not been added to the eligibility criteria. This means that shipping lines’ experience is not counted at all. Therefore, shipping lines would not be in a position to actively participate in port projects of major ports in future,” said an official of a private shipping line requesting not to be identified. The RFQ provides due weightage to project and construction experience on marine structures, terminals, amongst others but has no reference to shipping line experience.

“It has been our desire to get into terminal operations because that is the logical extension for shipping majors as can be seen internationally (Maersk, NYK, etc). Ideally, shipping lines’ experience should get due weightage. We plan to approach the Shipping Ministry on the issue,” Mr S. Hajara, Chairman, SCI, told Business Line. With this, SCI has a lower chance to technically qualify with any significant stake in a consortium, he added. According to the Container Shipping Lines Association Vice-Chairman, Mr Anil Devli, “Several members have raised this issue with us. We will decide our next course of action soon.” Mr Devli is the CEO of coastal shipping firm Shreyas Shipping.

Moreover, with the RFQ stating that financial bids would be invited from four-five technically qualified bidders, the players are keen to get higher technical points to be able to bid financially. “It is an established international business practice that for container terminals and ports to be successful, assured volumes and throughput from shipping lines is required,” said a source. Ennore Port has invited bids for the technical qualification round to set up a container terminal with 1.5 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) annual capacity.

Chennai port has also invited technical bids for building a container terminal with 4 million TEU container handling capacity.

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