Three more jetties, 4 per cent growth to jet-set KOPT

Kolkata, Oct 17 (UNI) Kolkata Port Trust(KoPT), India's only riverine port, will add three more jetties within the next couple of years in its rank and projected a growth of four per cent with a targetted handling of 55 million tonnes of goods by March 2007.

While two ports will come at Haldia, one will come up at Diamond Harbour.

Besides its handling target to more than next year.

Announcing this KoPT Chairman Dr Anup Chandra said, "during the last four years when the KoPT had experienced a massive turnaround and increased its volume of business from 30 million tonnes in 2002 to 53.4 million tonnes during last year." "We are poised for at 4 per cent growth in terms of our business," Dr Chandra said.

He was speaking at the 136th anniversay of KoPT here tonight in the presence of a host of dignitaries, including State Urban Development Minister Ashok Bhattacharya, Chief Secretary A K Deb and Britsh Deputy High Commissioner to the city Simon Wilson.

KoPT is teh second busiest port of the courtyu. He said in order to become the busiest port among the country's 19 major ports in the next two years the KoPT had set an ambitious business module under which they were planning to add two more jetties with the Haldia dock system exclusively handling container vehicles and another at Diamond Harbour for the other sea-faring vessels.

"We are also planning to set up under PPP a deep sea port near the sand head and government is now in the process of selecting the right partners from the nine international bidders. Then when the port comes up it will completely change navigational importance of not only the port, but also the city, with handling nearly 80 per cent of the total business during that period come from sea vessels," Dr Chandar pointed out.

The guests reiterated their views about the government's plan to introduce the riverfront beautification project in a massive scale in the line of the ones created in London.

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