National Container Traffic Trends*

What is however, evidently clear is that establishment of JNPT and the NSICT has had a catalytic role in the growth of container cargo trade in the country and has set a model for other ports to emulate. The first phase of container traffic growth was however aided by increasing levels of containerization driving the container traffic growth. The level of containerization as a ratio of total general cargo (i.e. container and break bulk cargo) together with cargo categorized as 'Others" (comprising items like over-dimensional cargo, project cargo, etc) of cargo (see table 1.3) went up from 22 per cent in 1990-91 to 35 per cent in 2000-01. The trend towards increasing containerization has brought down the share of the break bulk cargo, from 50 per cent of the total general cargo in 1992 to a level of 32 per cent, in the same time period. However, it must be pointed out that while containerization has been one of the important drivers of container traffic growth over the past ten years, the overall growth of container traffic during this period has also been driven by other macro economic and trade-related developments.
The ten years of rapid container traffic growth has been a period of economic liberalization and globalization of Indian economy, which saw the economy open up itself to world market, both in terms of a policy thrust on value-added exports and liberalization of imports, through reduction in imports tariffs and scrapping of import licensing regime. Consequently, the total sea trade volumes (including the traffic handled by minor and intermediate ports) in tonnage terms have grown by 8 per cent on a compounded average basis in the period 1990-91to 2000-01, from 165.63 to 367.83 million tonnes (including the cargo traffic handled by minor and intermediate ports) The container traffic growth in tonnage terms in this period at 15 per cent is more than double the growth rate of total cargo trade handled by the major ports, at 6 per cent between 1990-91-2000-01. This relatively rapid growth in container cargo traffic volumes can be attributed to changing commodity composition of India's external trade in the last ten years, with a distinct shift towards value-added goods.