NAVI MUMBAI: Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), India’s biggest state-run container port, will issue a global tender in the next few days to privatise the container terminal run by the port authority itself after the project was approved by the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways last week.

The project is part of a list of seven operational cargo berths run by the government-owned major ports that will be privatised this fiscal through the public-private-partnership (PPP) route as the state-run ports move from a ‘trustee’ set up to an ‘authority’ model of governance under a new law passed by Parliament in February.

The successful bidder will have the freedom to set rates at the terminal based on market forces as envisaged by the new law. JNPT will only set indicate reference tariff for the purpose of bidding and the entity quoting the highest royalty per twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) will win the 30-year deal.

The plan to privatise the terminal through the PPP route was cleared by the port’s board of trustees last December. “It was approved by the standing finance committee (SFC) in the ministry and signed off by the minister last week,” a ministry sources said.

“The global tender will be issued soon,” according to sources in JNPT.

J N Port Container Terminal (JNPCT), one of the five container terminals operating at JNPT, handled 544,027 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in FY21 from 718,863 TEUs in FY20. The terminal has a capacity to handle 1.35 million TEUs a year.

JNPCT is the only container handling facility operated by a government-owned port authority across any of the 12 state-owned major ports in India.