Work for Subarnarekha port to begin in October

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Commerce and Transports Minister Dr Nrusingha Charan Sahu on Thursday said the work for the Subarnarekha port will begin in October this year.

The Subarnarekha port will be developed at cost of Rs 4,000 crore and the project will begin from October, said Sahu.

He said the project work will be completed in 36 months.

There is no problem relating to land acquisition for the port. The Chief Minister will lay the foundation stone soon, he said.

The move for construction work of the Subarnarekha port came following Defence Ministry’s nod for the proposed port project on the Subarnarekha River mouth on the Bay of Bengal in Balasore district.

In June, the defence ministry had given clearance for the construction of Subarnarekha port in Odisha.

The proposed port project is close to the integrated test range site of defence ministry at Chandipur in Balasore.

The state government has already handed over 692.68 acres of land to the port developers.

The union government gave environment clearance to the proposed port project in 2012.

An all-weather deep-draft commercial port at Subarnarekha River to be developed by the Chennai-based Creative Port Private Ltd (CPPL) will have an initial capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). It will be raised to 40 MTPA over 10 years.

Notably, CPPL had signed a MoU with the state government on December 18, 2006, to develop the project. Later, the revenue sharing agreement was inked between the two on January 11, 2008.

Meanwhile, Tata Steel has signed a definitive agreement with CPPL to get 51 per cent equity in the port project from the original promoters. Announcing the deal in January 2017, Tata Steel had said the investment to develop the Subarnarekha Port will address the strategic needs of the company in the future.

The port is likely to have the potential to handle large ships with 180,000 deadweight tonnage capacity with the 18-metre draft. It will help Tata Steel lower its transport and product costs.