COIMBATORE: The feasibility study on Colachel port in Kanyakumari district will be ready within two weeks, said Union Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said here on Sunday.
“So far, the study indicates a green signal,” he added. Once the port is commissioned, large foreign vessels will be able to berth there and would not need to go to Colombo. This would reduce transportation costs of exports.
However, for the entire project including inland container ports, large areas of land would have to be acquired in Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Madurai and Virudhachalam districts, he said.
The Minister was speaking at a meeting here on “Strategies for Making Indian Textile Industry Globally Competitive”, organised by the Texpreneurs Forum, South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association, Karur Exporters Association, Erode Textile and Garments Exporters Association, PDEXCIL, Sripuram Trust, NIFT-TEA and Tamil Nadu Autolooms Cloth Manufacturers Association.
He assured the textile entrepreneurs that they would be taken to New Delhi in July to meet the ministers concerned individually to discuss the issues they brought to his notice at the meeting.
He also called for a conference to be organised in New Delhi in the next couple of months to give wide publicity to the “dollar city” of Tirupur.
He urged the entrepreneurs to look beyond the textile industry and come forward and to implement the infrastructure works at Colachel port to compete better in the global market.
Radhakrishnan himself is trying to get implemented at least one infrastructure project like a bridge or road in every Parliament constituency in Tamil Nadu during his five-year tenure.
“Manufacturing is BJP government’s agenda. The sector was not given enough consideration by the earlier government. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is laying the foundation for its growth,” said BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao, who was also a guest of honour at the meeting.
“The BJP government has successfully completed one year, but leaders of opposition parties are making comments against it. I take their comments as compliments as people have high expectations from the Narendra Modi government,” he added.