Article - 95 Week 20 | NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT EXPORTS

Article - 95 Week 20 | 

NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT EXPORTS

Globally, Nhava Sheva has become a messy brand name as a container Terminal. A not so promising face to India's commercial hub. JNPT is quintessentially an Indian State run unit, mired with lethargy, inefficiency, & high costs. Ships queue for weeks. Windows keep getting rattled. Operators bleed. Customers cuss. NSICT, an exemplar of a highly suspicious state with ubiquitous ineptitude shaking hands with greedy private hands, sits with a large underutilized capacity, challenging a clueless & callous administration. Apparently, it loses more money if it functions with average productivity. More it produces, the more it loses. So, going slow, easy, and sticking to its basic minimum of self-acclaimed volumes, while leaving its capacity underutilized, is commercially right for them. Tragically, our inept Indian administration is known for its reputation in blocking businesses and scavenging on the spoils. Therefore, a solution is a far cry in the wilderness. GTI too is similarly plagued with restricted move counts.

With all the three Terminals chronically challenged, the exporters are left to cuss freely. Ships calling these Terminals are allowed to discharge all imports. However, exports are debilitatingly curtailed to account for the lost time and capacity to inefficiency & after-strike effects in JNPT, self-imposed lesser operations in NSICT, and move count restrictions in GTI. In other words, the port is welcoming imports with open arms and blocking all initiatives to exports. Understandably, it is operationally far too difficult to apportion the lost time and capacity equitably to exports and imports. However, is it not bad economics to bring in more imports and cut our exports? We have the time. We have the infrastructure. We have the capacity. We have the exports and the hunger for exports. And we have managed to kill them all Nhava Sheva & messed up beyond a redemption! It is time, the decision makers are poked & prodded to life from their moribund state of indecisions by the users or the public.

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Brgds

Capt Rath