Page 693 - ES 2020-21_Volume-1-2 [28-01-21]

320 Economic Survey 2020-21 Volume 2

Ports, Shipping and Waterways Services

9.31 Ports handle around 90 per cent of export-import cargo by volume and 70 per cent by
value in India. The total cargo capacity of major ports which was 871.52 Million Tonnes Per
Annum (MTPA) at the end of March 2014 has increased to 1,534.91 MTPA by the end of March
2020 and handled traffic of 704.92 MT during 2019-20. Ports including Deendayal (Kandla),

Paradip, JNPT, Vishakhapatnam, and Chennai had the highest cargo capacities as of March
2020. India has a 1 per cent share in world fleet as on January 2020. The total numbers of ships
owned by Indian companies stood at 1,431 in 2019-20, up from 1,210 in 2014-15.

9.32 A consistent growth of around 6 per cent was maintained in overall port traffic between
2015-16 and 2018-19. It decelerated to 1.98 per cent in 2019-20 before falling sharply in 2020
owning to the lockdown in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic (Figure 6(a)). Cargo traffic growth
contracted considerably between April to June 2020, however is now showing signs of pick up.
Infact, cargo traffic growth has turned positive since September 2020, Figure 6(b).

Figure 6 (a): Annual Growth (YoY) Figure 6 (b): Monthly Growth (YoY)
in Port Traffic in Port Traffic

Source: Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways

9.33 The turnaround time of ships, which is a key indicator of efficiency of the ports sector,
has declined from 4 days in 2014-15 to 2.62 days in 2020-21 (April-September). The shipping
turnaround time has declined across all major ports and is now the lowest at the Cochin port

and the highest at the Mormugao port (Table 9). It must be noted that among all the major ports,
Paradip port has shown biggest improvement in reducing average turnaround time of ships
from over 7 days in 2014-15 to less than 3 days in 2020-21(April-September). As per the latest
UNCTAD data, the median ship turnaround time globally is 0.97 days, suggesting that India has
room to further improve upon the efficiency at ports.