Battling COVID-19 pandemic and a sluggish market, Visakhapatnam Port Authority recorded a cargo handling turnover of 69.03 million tonnes for the financial year ending 2021-22. This was about 1% lower than the corresponding previous year, when the port handled 69.84 million tonnes of cargo.
Though the port registered some good growth in handling of steam coal, thermal coal and containers, there has been a drop in its core products such as crude oil, iron ore and coking coal.
According to the Chairman of VPA, K. Rama Mohana Rao, the drop in the iron ore from 188.61 lakh tonnes to 145.59, was mainly due to the fall in prices in the international market and the drop in coking coal from 54.23 lakh tonnes to 44.28 lakh tonnes is due the Union government asking the coal users to buy domestic coal under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat initiative, to reduce the outflow of foreign exchange. In crude oil handling, there is a drop of about 11%, over the previous year.
