KOCHI:
Coastal Rice Consignment of Food Corporation of India arrives Cochin Port Government of India had embarked upon a port led development project called Sagarmala, which is the flagship programme of the Ministry of Shipping to promote coastal shipping through harnessing India’s 7,500 km long coastline, 14,500 km of potentially navigable waterways and the Ports.
As part of the programme, the initiative and sustained efforts of the Marketing Team under Traffic department of Cochin Port to promote coastal shipping gave yet another positive result when a consignment of 4732 Metric tonnes of rice in 182 containers arrived ICTT Vallarpadam of Cochin Port on 10 th November 2018 in a container ship named SSL Kochi. The consignment of rice is on account of Food Corporation of India (FCI) for public distribution in Kerala, shipped from Kakinara Port and arrived Cochin via Krishnapatnam.
Until recently, FCI was bringing rice predominantly by rail and this is a modal shift to coastal shipping as the same proved cost effective for FCI. It is expected that 10,000 tonnes of rice per month will come from Andhra Pradesh to Kerala in the days to come.
On this occasion, Dr M Beena, Chairperson of Cochin Port thanked FCI and the carrier M/s Avana Logistek Ltd for making it happen. She said that efforts are on to bring wheat a/c FCI from Punjab/Haryana to Kerala using coastal shipping, which apart from giving additional volume to the Port will be cost effective for the public distribution giant.
