Non-Major Ports under the purview of Government of Karnataka

The state of Karnataka has a coastline of ~150 nautical miles (~320 km). It has a total of 13 non-major ports including Karwar Port in the north and Old Mangalore Port in the South. It has 3 coastal districts namely, Uttara Kannada, Udupi and Dakshina Kannada. Among the 13 non-major ports of the state (i.e., Karwar, Keni, Belekeri, Tadadi, Pavinakurve, Manki, Honnavar, Bhatkal, Kundapura, Hangarakatta, Malpe, Padubidri, Old Mangalore), only Karwar and Old Mangalore are all-weather green-field ports, whilst the rest operate as anchorage and lighterage ports.

Ports are important hubs for the trade of goods between countries and serve as key infrastructure in facilitating logistics chain of activities i.e., transporting goods in the most economical way.

It is observed that there is a huge gap between the demand for port services and the existing cargo handling capacity of ports available in India. However, marine transport has the highest modal share of export-import cargo in India. Sea routes provide an efficient and cost-effective mode of transporting large quantities of goods. As per Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterway’s (MoPSW) estimates, traffic at seaports is likely to grow exponentially in the upcoming year.

With the growing cargo traffic across the Indian coastline, it is essential to develop commodity-focussed state-of-the-art Port infrastructure. The major ports in India have a total of 249 berths, 9 single buoy moorings and two barge jetties to handle the cargo traffic.

However, it must be noted that Indian ports largely continue to remain dominated by multipurpose berths (approximately 60%), which evidently is falling short of specialized commodity-focused requirements.