18 companies in fray for Nargol Port

AHMEDABAD: Eighteen companies have qualified to bid for developing a port at Nargol in south Gujarat. HCC, GVK, GMR, Gammon, Adani, ABG and IL&FS are in the race to grab the rights to develop the Rs 1,750-crore port, which would house three berths for containers and bulk cargo with an initial capacity of three to five million tones a year. The Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) had received requests for qualification from 22 players last year.

The Gujarat Maritime Board wants to sign the letter of intent by July, a state government official who was a part of the qualification process said. "We have planned a pre-bid conference on May 18 before soliciting technical and financial bids. A state government-appointed committee will assess the technical and financial abilities of the interested players," he said.

The proposed port location, which has a draft up to 16 metres, is 140 km from Mumbai and 120 km from Surat. The developers are expecting to attract traffic from government-controlled Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Maharashtra to Nargol, which falls on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor.