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Visakhapatnam, Nov. 19 Visakhapatnam should be developed as a transshipment container hub on the east coast to make containerisation cost-effective, according to Mr Sriram Ravi Chander, Chief Operating Officer of Visakha Container Terminal.

He was delivering a lecture on the potential of the container terminal here at the two-day conference — East Coast Maritime Summit 2008 — which concluded here on Wednesday. It was jointly organised by the Vizagpatam Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Exim India’s Fairplay Exposition group.

He said it would be much cheaper if the container cargo emanating from Kolkata and Chennai could be routed through Vizag, to reach the East Asian nations. “On the east coast, Vizag is the ideal hub for container cargo,” he said.

Capt. Vijaya Gopal, the CEO of Seaways Shipping, spoke at length about the constraints plaguing coastal shipping in India and how they should be tackled.

He observed that logistics cost in India was as high as 25 per cent of the GDP as against only eight per cent in the developed countries.

He argued that the cost could be brought down only if the Union Government encouraged coastal shipping and inland waterways and reduced dependence on road transport.

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