It has claimed that such a policy will result in steady environmental degradation and have disastrous consequences in the long-run. It suggests that promoters need to undertake comprehensive studies when promoting box terminal schemes which need to be seen in a global scenario, when apportioning traffic to regions.
As an example of the problem, it cites the Vallarpadam and Vizinjam projects, located just 120 km from one another, but due to handle essentially the same transhipment traffic.
Nevertheless, with the Shipping Ministry has stated that existing ports are operating at 90%-100% capacity, and that overall capacity needs to grow threefold.
Current capacity is around 963m tonnes, but by 2020 this will need to be 3.23bn tonnes.