Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has handed over more than 119 acre of land to Gopalpur Port in Ganjam district for further development and expansion.
The Commerce and Transport Department on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Gopalpur Port Private Limited and handed over land measuring 119.71 acre.
The MoU was signed by Padmalochan Roul, Director, Ports & Inland Waterway Transport, Commerce & Transport department and Janardan Rao, CEO, Gopalpur Port Private Limited in the presence of Tukuni Sahu, Minister, Commerce & Transport Department, Amitav Thakur, Transport Commissioner and Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Special Secretary of the department.
This land is in addition to 393.67 acre handed over to Gopalpur Port in the first phase.
It may be noted that Gopalpur Port was operated by the state government as a seasonal lighterage port from 1986 to 87. It was awarded to Gopalpur Ports Private Limited for transforming it to an all-weather direct berthing port on PPP mode. The Concession Agreement between the state government and Gopalpur Ports Private Limited was signed on September 14, 2006.
At present, the port has 3 berths built over 800 metre to accommodate multiple vessels with annual cargo handling capacity of 20 MMT. The port has generated direct and indirect employment opportunity for 8,000 persons.