Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Iron Ore Exporters Association has demanded the Paradip Port Authorities to immediately auction all the vacant 38 plots while reducing the exorbitantly high rent price of iron ore plots in view of the falling iron ore prices in the global market.
In a representation to the Chairman of Paradip Port Trust, the Association has made a demand to immediately auction all the vacant 38 manual and mechanical plots and to fix the reserve price at Rs 9 per Square meter. The exporter’s body has also demanded reduction of cost of operation of cargo handling at the port.
In its letter, the association has accused that the policies of the port are biased towards few large iron ore miners, leading to monopolizing the iron ore fines trade through the port under the hand of the large miners. As per the existing auction policy of the port, the reserve price of the plots is fixed on the basis of the quotes of the highest bidder. Currently, the reserve price has been escalated to Rs. 1371 per Square meter as per quoted by a leading miner of the state.
Due to this high price, as many as 100 plots remained vacant for the last couple of years resulting loss of export traffic of about 5 MnT and loss of revenue of the port. Also due to these exorbitantly high prices of the iron ore plots the number of iron ore fines exporters have reduced to only 10 from 80 in 2006-07. The existing 10 exporters are mainly large miners of the state of Odisha.
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