Some of the government-owned ports are bringing revenue losses to the government as they are not fulfilling their obligatorty tasks on contracts signed with private cargo handling firms, delaying their implementation and hurting the ability of these facilities to operate at full potential.    

The latest such incident involves Visakhapatnam port on the east coast where the port authority was yet to dredge the approach channel and entrance of an outer cargo berth given to a consortium led by Sterlite Industries (India).    To help capesize ships at Visakhapatnam port to dock at the berth, the port trust is obliged to dredge the approach/entrance channel to a depth of 20 metre, the largest of the dry bulk cargo carriers, according to an agreement signed with the Sterlite-led consortium in June 2010. The facility, one of the very few public-private partnership (PPP) projects in the ports sector to be built on time in the last five years, started operations in February.