Union Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari might have felt he was doing Goa an immense favour when he announced a Rs 1,500 crore plan to build a satellite port at Betul for which land admeasuring 150 to 200 acres would be required. The port would handle bauxite and iron ore. The reason for building another port in a state that has a land mass of 3,702 sq km, (much smaller than Sindhudurg district which is 5,207 sq km) is because there is no space for the existing port at Mormugao to expand. The people of Goa and those living in and around Betul will react quite differently and Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar is aware of the potential this project has for stirring a storm of protests, something he would want to avoid in an election year and even after.
The proposal to build a port at Betul was in the air for a while, but the Union Minister’s announcement makes it official. The enormity of the project and its location in picturesque Betul is yet to sink in, but when it does, there will be hell to pay for. Of course, the final decision will have to be taken by the State government which has to acquire the land and transfer it to the Mormugao Port Trust for development. If the Defence Expo and the opposition to a mini-harbour at Cutbona were to be used as barometers of the anathema to large projects, the proposal of a port is likely to reap the whirlwind. One does not have to go far into the past for a replay on what happened to a proposal to build a cruise terminal at the Aguada bay.
Firstly, the reason for building a satellite port to transport bauxite and iron ore seems feeble. At its peak in 2010-11 the Mormugao port handled 40 million tonnes of iron ore on the export side and nine million tonnes on the import side with coal and coke accounting for nearly seven million tonnes. With the Supreme Court placing a cap of 20 million tonnes on iron ore production there certainly is a lot of spare capacity. Container traffic which was 126,000 tonnes in 2014-15 fell to 95,000 tonnes in 2015-16. Last year the port played host to the largest wood-chip carrier with a capacity of 4.32 million cubic feet and a length of 210 meters. The port is also pursuing a plan to develop berth 8, 9 and barge berths at a cost of Rs 1,085 crore. There is a lot of expansion happening at the Mormugao Port and the road network to facilitate movement of imported goods will get a boost once the four-lane road, which will provide connectivity from the port to NH17 is completed.
The Union government might have its own plans, but it is up to the State government to explain why tiny Goa needs a second port to export iron ore and bauxite, which can easily be handled by the Mormugao Port Trust? While economic growth is essential, investment of Rs 1,500 crore and converting a picturesque area into a mass of steel and concrete needs to be well thought out. Goa is not as big as Maharashtra which has a coastline of 720 km or Karnataka with 320 km. Goa’s coast is the backbone of the tourism industry and another port would be more than the state could handle.
