Air cargo facility from Vizag mooted

Visakhapatnam: Due to lack of cargo flight facility from the Visakhapatnam airport, the exporters and importers of the state have been facing tough times and also losing money. Though the state has won the first position in ‘Ease of Doing Business’ among the 28 states in the country, the long-awaited cargo facility is not coming true.

At an average 2,200 tonnes of cargo per month is being shifted through air cargo from the neighbouring airports. The imports and exports are being transported through rail and road to the nearest airports in Hyderabad and Tamil Nadu.

The Andhra Pradesh Air Travelers Association (APATA), which is coordinating with the AAI and other trade bodies for the development of the flight connectivity from the Visakhapatnam airport.

Presently, domestic flights almost all the major cities in the country, and four international destinations of Singapore, Kualalumpur- Malaysia, Colombo-Sri Lanka and Dubai running from the airport with 2.5 million air passengers. Visakhapatnam airport is also the largest airport and handled about 60 per cent of air traffic in the state.

The international cargo has 747 per cent growth when compared to Q-1 of FY-2017-18. There is significant movement of domestic cargo as well. The movement of domestic cargo was 4,846 tonnes during 2017-18 and international cargo was 296 tonnes during March 2017/18 ending.

“A lot of pharma companies have been manufacturing base here and many other exporters are routing their cargo from Visakhapatnam by road to Hyderabad and Chennai airports. We have done a preliminary study with the help of local air cargo handling agents and airport director of AAI.

We were shocked to know that 60 tonnes of international cargo is going from Visakhapatnam airport whereas 2,000 tonnes per month of cargo is being sent by road to Hyderabad and Chennai airports for exports,” Vice Presidents of APATA Dr K Kumar Raja, DS Varma and O Naresh Kumar informed Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

The primary reasons for diversion of cargo are lack of wide body aircrafts, lack of dedicated cargo flights operating out of Visakhapatnam. Lack of high volume storage space, temperature control rooms to handle bulk cargo, lack of heavy cargo handling equipment by the ground handling agents have also causing troubles to the exporters and importers of the state, the APATA delegates informed the Chief Minister.

Visakhapatnam is a biggest hub of marine exports and emerging as a pharma hub. The state is improving Ease of Doing Business for existing entrepreneurs for reducing cost and time, the APATA delegates said.

They requested to facilitate a meeting with a leading cargo airlines in the country and design a suitable viability gap funding (through Andhra Pradesh Airports Development Corporation Limited (APADCL) in line with Vijayawada - Singapore service by indigo / promotion budget to promote introduction of dedicated cargo liners from Visakhapatnam for a limited period of one year.