Gujarat Maritime Board to revise port charges

Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat, 5 December 2014

Gujarat Maritime Board(GMB), the state regulator for all the government and private ports of the state has started the process of revising it’s crucial Schedule of Port Charges(SPC) which can have domino effect on several other business activity in the state and country. Schedule of Port charges is the core document describing various charges and tariffs to be levied by Gujarat Maritime Board at all the Ports under its jurisdiction for rendering necessary services and providing eminent facilities to the Port users for handling their cargo.

The port tariffs were last revised on 20th July 2012 and since then the traffic has shown remarkable increase both in terms of number of commodities and tonnage. Ever since the introduction of the port policy, 1995, there has been a significant progress in the privatization of port services and development of captive jetties along the coastline of GMB ports. GMB is the licensor for the private ports and captive jetties. GMB aims to implement new tariffs from April 2015.

Sources in the GMB informed that, ” the development of the state port sector is likely to gain momentum with the establishment of many more port terminals and augmentation in the level of services and infrastructure. GMB intend to optimize rate per ton of commodities handled on the private ports and captive jetties than that on its own ports. GMB is preparing estimates of expected traffic considering all the factors like available infrastructure, market condition, rate of competitive ports etc. In view of such evolving market scenario, GMB is keen to assess the current tariff competitiveness of its ports and rationalize the port tariff structure.”

The GMB is assessing traffic covering ports of GMB, all private ports, as well as competing /neighboring ports and linkages with previous tariffs and current and future trend in ship sizes and international freights, traffic projections – port and commodity wise, international and domestic price movements of main commodities and rationalization of port tariff structure with short, medium and long term perspectives.