Industry Odisha Bureau, May 11: As part of its National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), the Government of India (GoI) is believed to be exploring ways and means for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) for the country’s largest container port JNPA for which the state-backed investment banks have been entrusted with the responsibility of initiating the requisite processes and paraphernalia.
Sources informed: “Seal of approval for the proposed IPO for JNPA would be first accorded by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways followed by the concerned port authority since it is being managed by the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority”.
Sources, however, informed that the process meant for the proposed JNPA IPO is “in its preliminary stage that would be followed by several departmental approvals”.
Nevertheless, concerted efforts are on to brace JNPA up so that it could be fit and fine for “the compliance and reporting standards requisite for being a publicly listed organisation”, sources stated.
If JNPA is finally ready for a public listing, it is being claimed to be “the second state-owned Indian port prepared for IPO, because the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has reportedly accorded its seal of approval to Kamarajar Port for IPO earlier to JNPA.
Notably, “Kamarajar Port (formerly called Ennore Port) is the 12th major port of India, but the first and only major port in India registered as a company (Kamarajar Port Limited). Situated on the Coromandel Coast, 18 km north of Chennai Port in Tamil Nadu and commissioned in 2001, it is India’s first corporatized major port operating under a landlord model to handle coal, liquid cargo and container traffic.”
So far JNPA is concerned, “Located at Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra on the eastern shores of the Arabian Sea near Mumbai, JNPA is a premier container handling port in India accounting for around 50-54 per cent of the total containerized cargo volumes across the major ports of India.”
“Commissioned on 26th May 1989, JNPA has transformed from a bulk cargo terminal to the premier container port in the country in less than three decades of its operations. Ranked 23rd among the top 100 Container Ports in the world, JNPA is connected to over 200 ports in the world.”
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