Emerging markets

Published on January 9th, 2013 | by Louise Ramsay

New port development guidelines for India

India has taken a major step to speed up the process for port development projects under the public-private partnership model.

Obtaining security clearance for concession contracts has been blamed as one of the major factors in slowing port development down, but new guidelines hope to address this.

The Indian government said: “The Ministry of Shipping would prepare and circulate a list of all Indian and foreign companies that normally bid for port projects to the concerned security agencies. On receipt of the details, security agencies would provide their inputs on such a list to the Ministry of Shipping within 12 weeks.

“Once security clearance is accorded to any company by the Ministry of Shipping, based on the inputs of relevant ministries and other agencies with respect to any port project, such clearance in respect of that company will be valid for three years.”

Pre-qualified bidders

The guidelines state that price bids for port contracts would not be opened until “prequalified bidders” are granted security clearance by the Shipping Ministry.

The government said: “Security clearance is essential for non-major ports, including private ports, set up under the PPP model in the states due to the sensitiveness of the port sector.”

Maritime plan

The Shipping Ministry launched a $110bn maritime initiative in 2011 to expand the country’s port capacity to 3.2bn tons by 2020. This is an increase from the current 1bn tons and is aimed at dealing with projected growth in cargo volumes.

As part of the plan, the ministry expects to award 42 projects under public-private and state-funded developmental schemes over the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, 2013. This will add an estimated capacity of about 250m tons a year.


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