KOCHI: Six months after its commissioning, the country’s first ever International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam is yet to commence actual operations.With hundreds of containers held up at ICTT and a number of international companies backing out, the terminal is in real crisis.As many as 416 containers have been held up at ICTT for more than a month due to lack of feeder vessels. Already some international shipping companies - CMA CGM, Maersk and ZIM - which had begun mainline operations to the ICTT, went back to Colombo for transshipment due to the delay in sending containers from here to destination ports, sources said.While the terminal is projected to handle an estimate of 7.75 lakh TEUs (Twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers in 2011, the 13 available Indian feeder vessels together has a capacity to carry only 12,156 TEUs at any point of time.Also these 13 vessels, from SCI, Relay Shipping, Gati, Seaways, Jindal and Caravel, touch ICTT Vallarpadam only occasionally.Due to lack of feeder vessels, the container traffic has not increased much even after the commissioning of ICTT, officials said.“Compared to the corresponding period last year, there is an increase of only about 4 percentage in container handling. It’s much less than what we actually projected to achieve this year. The depth has not become an issue for vessels to call at ICTT,” Cochin Port Trust Chairman Paul Antony said.However, statistics so far doesn’t paint a rosy picture. While, 1,30,887 containers were handled during April-August 2010, this year only 1,36,734 containers were handled.In 2010, 3.12 lakh TEUs of containers were handled here. DP World, the promoter of ICTT Vallarpadam, has projected this to be 7.75 lakh TEUs this year, which would rake in Rs 109.91 crore for the Cochin Port Trust.If no action is taken to exclude cargo vessels from the Cabotage law - which prevents foreign flag vessels to transship containers between Indian ports - ICTT Vallarpadam may not survive as a transshipment terminal.It has been pointed out that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Cabotage has resolved that the law should be relaxed to enable transshipment of containers through foreign flag vessels from Vallarpadam.The Director General of Shipping has also recommended opening up of containerised cargo to foreign flag vessels.
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