India’s government may miss a target to add capacity at its 12 major ports as the economy grew less than anticipated and global trade slumped amid a recession, the shipping secretary said.

The government-controlled ports will have a capacity to handle 743 million tons of cargo by March 31, 2012, compared with a target of 1.02 billion tons, K. Mohandas, the shipping ministry’s top bureaucrat, said in an interview in New Delhi.

Investment requirements in the five years to March 2012 may drop 61 percent to 220 billion rupees ($4.7 billion), Mohandas said yesterday. India’s economic growth slowed to 6.7 percent in the year ended March as the global recession damped world trade prompting sea carriers to park vessels.

“The expected level of growth was not seen in the last two years,” Mohandas said. Still, “the capacity will be adequate depending on traffic projections, depending on everybody’s assessment of movement of world trade and India’s share in world trade.”

The volume of cargo at the major ports is expected to increase to 650 million tons per annum in the year ending in March 2012, Mohandas said.

India’s finance minister has said inadequacies at the country’s ports, power, roads and other infrastructure shaves about two percentage points off the economic growth rate. Asia’s third-biggest economy seeks to double its share in global trade by 2020 from 1.64 percent in 2008, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said Nov. 11.

Economic Growth

India’s economy should return to 9 percent growth in two years, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Nov. 10. About 95 percent of India’s trade by volume and 70 percent by value are moved through sea, according to the government.

The country’s 12 biggest government-controlled ports had a capacity to handle 574.77 million tons of cargo in the year ended March 31, 2009, compared with the 530.53 million tons of freight moved through them in that year.

Of these, ports at Visakhapatnam, Chennai, both on the east coast, Mormugao and Mumbai, both on the west coast, handled cargo exceeding their capacity.

There are 17 projects at the major ports in the country pending for award that will add up to 183.5million tons, Mohandas said. Of these, as many as five projects totaling about 50 million tons will be awarded by the end of March, he said.

The remaining will spill over to the next year, some delayed due to disputes, Mohandas said, without elaborating. (Bloomberg)