KOCHI: The Cochin Port Trust(CPT) and the Navy have inked a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) which will allow the leasing out of two under utilised berths at the port to the Navy for a period of five years. The MoU was signed here on Friday by Southern Naval Command Chief of Staff Officer (operations) Commodore Deepak Kumar and CPT traffic manager Gautam Gupta.
‘’The MoU has been signed to aid the future requirements of the Navy, with a sizeable fleet expansion scheduled to take place in the near future. The expanded berthing space will provide the much-needed operational flexibility to naval ships based at Kochi, naval authorities said. This is the first time such an agreement has been signed between the Navy and the CPT.
As per the MoU, the Port Trust will hand over to the Navy 228 m of Q2 and Q3 berths of Mattanchery wharf . The port will get an approximate income of `10 crore annually in lieu of this. The Mattanchery channel leading up to the wharf has a depth of 9.7 m, length of 4.08 km and a depth of 180 -250 m. The Cochin Port has two wharfs - Ernakulam and Mattanchery. The CPT management had earlier said the utilisation of wharf was below 15 per cent of its optimum capacity.