Container traffic through major ports in India grew about 4 percent year-over-year in the first eight months of fiscal 2011-12, the Indian Ports Association said Monday.

    Traffic at the ports from April through November was 5.18 million 20-foot equivalent units, up from 5 million TEUs a year earlier. The tonnage of containerized traffic increased 8.2 percent to 79.6 million metric tons from 73.5 million metric tons.

    Container throughput at Jawaharlal Nehru (Nhava Sheva) and Chennai, the country’s two leading container ports, was nearly flat at 2.87 million TEUs and 1 million TEUs, respectively.

    Tuticorin handled 314,000 TEUs, up from 302,000 TEUs. Volume at Kolkata increased to 366,000 TEUs from 350,000 TEUs a year earlier.

    Cochin moved 232,000 TEUs compared with 222,000 TEUs. Mumbai’s traffic declined 17.5 percent to 41,000 TEUs from 49,000 TEUs in the same period last year.

    Total cargo tonnage at the 13 publicly owned major ports from April through November was up a mere 1.3 percent, from 370.7 million tons to 365.8 million tons, according to the IPA.

    Kandla emerged as the top cargo handler with throughput of 54 million tons, followed by Visakhapatnam, at 48 million tons; Nehru, at 43.6 million tons; and Chennai, at 37.8 million tons.

    Indian Shipping Minister G.K. Vasan said the government plans to expand overall port capacity to 3.13 billion tons by 2020 with an anticipated total investment of about $100 billion.

    “The total traffic handled by Indian ports in fiscal 2010-11 was 870 million tons and is expected to go up to around 2.5 billion tons by 2020,” Vasan said.

(Source:JOC)