KARACHI: Pakistan Nat­io­nal Shipping Corporation (PNSC) is looking to enter the marine services business, official sources told Dawn on Saturday.

The national flag carrier has bid for two 75-tonne bollard pull tugs and two pilot boats that Karachi Port Trust (KPT) requires on chartering and hiring bases for a three-year period.

PNSC currently has 19 subsidiaries that run different entities owned by the holding company. Nine of these subsidiaries are directly related to the shipping business, the sources said.

The corporation has nine vessels, including four oil tankers and five bulk carries. Each vessel is being looked after by a subsidiary of PNSC.

The official said the corporation is also planning to go into the business of dredging, which involves the removal of sediments from the harbour. He said foreign companies do most of the dredging at the country’s different ports, which causes a huge outflow of foreign exchange every year. “It will save the country millions of dollars once PNSC enters this business,” he said.

The official said annual maintenance dredging is of 3.5 million cubic metres and 5m cubic metres at Karachi Port and Port Qasim, respectively.

KPT has its own fleet of dredgers, but it falls short of the requirement because of a high cost of maintenance.

In addition, Port Qasim has to do capital dredging, carried out to create a new harbour or berth, of up to 25m cubic metres annually.

The official said Pasni and Gwadar also carry out annual maintenance dredging of up to 0.8m cubic metres.

PNSC can set up a new subsidiary to handle the marine services business, the official said.

Like their international counterparts, Pakistani ports will ultimately have to adopt the landlord-port concept under which the port authority owns only the basic infrastructure while leasing out the rest of the functions to independent operators on a long-term basis, the official said.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2017