{"id":8783,"date":"2013-03-13T11:31:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T06:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.entecity.com\/?p=8783"},"modified":"2013-03-13T11:36:17","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T06:06:17","slug":"the-distant-dream-called-vizhinjam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/the-distant-dream-called-vizhinjam\/","title":{"rendered":"The Distant Dream called ‘Vizhinjam’"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years people of Kerala have been hearing about Vizhinjam International seaport<\/strong> and looking forward to the project to materialize. But at the rate things are going the prospects of the project look pretty bleak indeed. Ever since the project was mooted 25 years ago there has been some hurdle or other meant to stall the progress.<\/p>\n

The road so far<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, the project was conceived on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model and two rounds of bidding and tenders were called. In the first round a Chinese company won the bid but failed to get security clearance from the central government. In the second round Lanco group managed to get the tender, but they too failed to start the project after Zoom developers challenged them in the High court. Lobbying by vested interests was suspected behind this move at that time.<\/p>\n

Subsequently the LDF government proposed a new model called the landlord model and bidding also was carried out. The bid went to Welspun Group being the lone player in the field. When UDF assumed power, Welspun requested for a grant of 480 crore and after lengthy negotiations, Welspun lost the project. Meanwhile Central government insisted on Environment impact assessment study which lasted for more than one year. The report is yet to see the daylight. Unfortunately, attempts to sabotage the dream project were made by some resort owners. They even went to the extent of delaying the submission of EIA report by influencing the World Bank. They even managed to convince World Bank that commissioning of the project will have deleterious effects on fishery, marine ecosystem and tourism and that too without any solid grounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Vizhinjam. Click by Anoop Anand A<\/p><\/div>\n

Current situation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now it is learned that Kerala government is trying for central government grant in the form of VGF (Viability Gap Funding). Unfortunately to get maximum grant, the financial model of Vizhinjam project have to be restructured. This means that the project is not going to take off anywhere in the near future. The unkindest cut of all came from Chidambaram. While announcing the union budget we were all shocked to hear him allocating 7500 crores for Thoothukudi port<\/a> while Vizhinjam was left high and dry with zero allocation. Apparently the state government was confident of Vizhinjam getting a good share and focused only on Azheekal port. Not demanding due allocation for Vizhinjam is certainly a huge lapse on the government\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

If things do not pick up pace even at this late hour, it is going to be death knell for a dream project which could have been one of a kind sea port boosting the economy and offering stiff competition to ports like Dubai, Colombo and Singapore. If government of Kerala is serious about Vizhinjam, they should at least make effort to provide basic infrastructure like rail connectivity, Road development, water and electricity supplies.<\/p>\n

It is sad that a project which could be a national asset is receiving so little priority and the vested interests are allowed to throw spanner in the works even now. \u00a0It is time to wake up and root for Vizhinjam International Seaport<\/strong> with all our might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For years people of Kerala have been hearing about Vizhinjam International seaport and looking forward to the project to materialize. But at the rate things are going the prospects of the project look pretty bleak indeed. Ever since the project was mooted 25 years ago there has been some hurdle or other meant to stall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4],"tags":[452,324],"class_list":["post-8783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-news","category-general","tag-trivandrum","tag-vizhinjam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entecity.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}