KARACHI, Jan 26: The ground breaking for the second phase of Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT) development work, costing $17 million, will take place in March.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Opec Fund for International Development have already approved loans for the second phase development work at the PICT which is fully owned and run by local private sector.
Tendering for civil work and for purchase of equipment will be finalized by third week of next month and ground breaking for the second phase will take place which will be ahead of time by at least three years.
This was stated by chairman PICT, Capt Haleem Siddiqui while giving a background briefing to leading businessmen and industrialists of the city on Wednesday at the PICT terminal.
The total cost of the container terminal was estimated at $75 million and the work for first phase development was undertaken in June 2002 at berth 6-9, East Wharf. The first phase development of the project was successfully completed ahead of schedule in March 2004, and within the targeted cost of $30 million.
Responding to a question from a clearing agent, the PICT chief said that the handling charges of private terminal may be a little higher, but ensure efficient and prompt service and above all there are no hidden costs which were normally practiced in public sector operations.
He said that PICT has the deepest designed berths in the country with a planned alongside depth of 13.5 meters and a current alongside depth of 12.2 meters. The dedicated area for the terminal is 220,000 square meters out of which PICT has taken possession of 136,000 sq meters. The quay wall length is 600 meters.
In order to remove bottle-necks and congestion at the approach point of the M A Jinnah Road, he said, a bridge will be constructed immediately at the down stream of the existing Jinnah bridge which will directly allow heavy vehicles to enter the terminal area without disturbing normal tariff on the road.
In the meantime, he said the KPT has started the widening work of the M A Jinnah road portion down from Jinnah bridge up to Keamari and it will have four tracks on each side, which will greatly help reduce congestion and road blocks caused by long vehicles entering the terminal.
A customs group representative Shakeel Dingra raised the issue of high handling charges and said that KPT was only charging wharfage but container operators are also charging handling charges which adds to the cost of port users.
Capt Haleem Siddqui said PICT was fully automated and was also meeting the security code of the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS). He said the terminal provides one-window operation and importers/ exporters could track the movement of their container over the web site.
For providing state of the art services, the PICT has taken up the service of Hamburg port as their operational advisor as well as technical consultants with National Engineering Services of Pakistan (Nespak) as their project consultant.
A leading industrialist of the city S M Muneer appricated the PICT services and said that local private sector should be facilitated to enter into other areas of the port, including wet operations, which are still handled by the KPT.
Business leader Tariq Sayeed while giving his opinion on the operations of the terminal said efficiency and cost cut could only be achieved if private sector was allowed to operate freely.
The PICT chief said that presently the terminal was handling around 120,000 TEUs per annum but still have the capacity to go up to 150,000, but after the implementation of second phase the capacity would rise up to 300,000 per annum.
Besides carrying civil work under phase two, the PICT will also add to its equipments by inducting one more ship-to-shore gantry crane to take the total to three. Similarly, he said two rubber tyred gantries (RTGs) will also be inducted to take the total to six. Another reach stacker and one top lifter will be added under phase two.
He said that two container stuffing forklifts and five terminal towing units along with 15 trailers will be added in the phase to meet enhanced handling capacity of the container terminal of the TEUs.
