KARACHI, March 2 Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Senator Babar Khan Ghauri said more projects would be taken up to facilitate port users and to meet the future challenges.

Inaugurating cement silos at the Karachi Port on Sunday, the minister said that fast pace of development witnessed in his previous tenure would be maintained by taking up more projects in the coming days.

He said that Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has been taken into confidence and future projects would be inaugurated by him.

KPT chairperson Ms Nasreen Haque termed the first-ever cement silos a shining example of public-private partnership and said that it was another milestone to a long list of port projects.

She said that construction of silos was initiated in March 2007 for which KPT had to demolish five bays of shed No 25 to provide space for the four silos of 6,000 tons capacity.

The Karachi Port during first seven months of current fiscal (July-January) handled 1.24 million tons of bulk cement and 0.8 million tons in bags, she added.

Ms Nasreen Haque said silos facility provides faster movement of cement and in present global economic slowdown, they would give an edge to our exporters over others in the region.

The KPT chairperson hoped that Pakistan Deep Water Container Port once completed at eastern backwaters would become a leading port of the region.

It will have a cable stay bridge of 300 metres to connect it with the cargo village to be developed at western backwaters of the port.

She further said that cargo village would directly be linked with M-10 highway which would help remove congestion on city roads.