Tamil Nadu formulates minor ports policy

The Tamil Nadu Government has formulated a new minor ports policy under which, the private sector will be invited to develop ports.

The policy covers 16 minor ports in the state and any other port that might be identified by the Tamil Nadu Maritime Board (TNMB). The minor ports covered are Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Rameswaram, Pamban, Valinokkam, Kanyakumari, Colachel, Kattupalli, Ennore, Cheyyur, Thiruchopuram, Silambimangalam Shipyard, Thirukkadaiyur, Thirukkuvalai, Punnakayal, Manappad, and any other port identified by TNMB.

The objectives of the minor port policy are to increase Tamil Nadu's share of export and import activities, in national and international trade and commerce, to decongest Ennore, Chennai and Tuticorin ports, so as to improve their productivity, to create sufficient infrastructure facilities to handle 25 per cent of the country's total cargo in Tamil Nadu Maritime waters, to provide facilities to encourage ship building, repairing, breaking and manufacture of cranes and floating crafts and so on.

The government hopes that developing the minor ports with modern cargo handling facilities, will equip many of them to emerge as transhipment ports, to handle cargo in international trade with Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Madagascar and South Africa.

Government working on integrated transport policy

The Central government is preparing an integrated transport policy covering all the four modes of transportation - highways, railways, airways and coastal shipping. Considering India's total transport volume and the unit cost of each of mode, the policy will decide on the improvements required in the transport infrastructure by 2025.

The Planning Commission has appointed RITES to determine the total transport output or volume of India. Based on the next five year assessments sent by all the four transport sectors, RITES will determine the model or the unit cost of each mode and the transport model mix for 2025.

RITES has to submit this study to the Planning Commission by December 2007; and based on its inputs, the government would draft the integrated transport policy.

Policy for regional airlines announced

In order to enhance connectivity between Tier-II and Tier-III cities, the government on 09 August 2007, announced a new policy for regional airlines, which will operate primarily between airports in any of the four regions classified as North, South, West and East/North-East.

According to the policy, which will cover both aircraft and helicopter operators, the airports of one particular region will be designated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

However, the new policy does not offer any sops to regional carriers. Incentives like total exemption from navigation and airport charges, and a lower 4 per cent sales tax on ATF are available to both regional as well as pan-India carriers, as long as the size of the aircraft used is less than 40,000 kg.

The regional airlines will get a scheduled operators' license, which is different from the one given to a scheduled operator having pan-India operations. An airline in a particular region will be able to operate from one metro (e.g. Delhi for the north region) to all the non-metros in the region. It will also be able to operate to other regions provided it does not operate in a metro.

However, the airlines, which have taken a license to operate in the southern region can operate flights between the three metros of the region - Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The new carriers under the policy also do not have to follow route dispersal guidelines like the pan-India scheduled carriers, which have to fly non-profitable routes, like in the North-East.