Title - ICTT lets down Railways

Adding to the woes of the International  Container Transshipment Terminal, it is now the turn of the Railways to cry foul.While the Cochin Port Trust has already been up in arms over the under-performance of the much-hyped terminal, what worries the Railways is the scarce revenue from the facility after having invested Rs 360 crore for rail connectivity to the terminal from Edappally. With the ICTT struggling to pick up, the railway-line built exclusively for container movement is lying almost idle. According to highly-placed Railways officials, the rate of return (RoR) from the railway line is negligible compared to the investment. “Like any other stakeholder of the project, we were also hopeful of its success and expected that we will get at least one full rake (40 containers) of outward movement per day. Unfortunately, outward movement is almost nil. We do not get even a single full rake movement in a month,” said a top official of the Railways. For instance, the Railways can earn Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 15 lakhs from a full rake of outward movement from Kochi to Whitefield ICD (Inland Container Depot) in Bangalore.“Railways’ earning through container freight comes from outward movement which does not happen here. Trains coming to the ICTT return with empty rakes,” said P L Ashok Kumar,  Railways’ area manager in Kochi.

“Even on July 6, a train which came fully loaded from Bangalore returned with an empty rake, after waiting for an additional day in anticipation of cargo,” he said.

The railway line link was constructed by the Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL). The 8.86-metre rail link has the longest rail bridge in the country, spanning 4.62 km, over Kochi’s iconic Vembanad Lake. The project also has four smaller bridges, built on 1.2 diameter piles driven to an average depth of 55 metres.

Work on the project began in June 2007 and was completed in record time in two years overcoming all hurdles.

The funds for the project was allotted by the Government of India through the Ministry of Shipping. RVNL constructed it and handed over to the Railway.

Commissioned in February 2011 with a capacity to handle 1 million TEUs annually, the ICTT has not touched this figure yet. As per statistics available with the Cochin Port Trust, the parent organisation of the ICTT, the volume of containerised cargo handled at ICTT has fallen by 10 per cent during the first 45 days of the current fiscal in comparison to the same period in the last fiscal.

In the first 14 days of June, the situation was even more pathetic with the growth-rate registering a steep fall by 20 per cent. The terminal had registered a negative growth of 5 per cent in the first ten days of January 2012, compared to the same period in the financial year 2010-11.