Safe anchor

New Delhi, Oct. 16: The shipping ministry has asked its finance counterpart to soon provide central government guarantees to raise a Rs 1500-crore loan for the Sethu Samudram ship canal project linking the Arabian sea with the Bay of Bengal.

UTI Bank has been selected as the consultant for arranging the loans, sources said. The guarantees will make it easier and cheaper to raise finance.

The project authorities have informed the shipping ministry that Crisil and Icra have been selected as the rating agencies for the bonds to be issued in the fund- raising drive.

The total cost of the canal is estimated at Rs 2,233 crore.

While Tamil Nadu chief minister has been staunchly opposing the project on the ground that it would disrupt the lives of the poor fishermen, shipping minister T.R. Baalu sees it as a dream project, akin to the Suez Canal.

The project will entail dredging work to deepen the Palk Strait to achieve a 10-metre draft so that ships can sail through.

At present, the the strait is only 3 metres deep at certain places.

As a result, ships cannot enter and have to take a detour around Sri Lanka to go to the east.

Even ships coming from the west coast to eastern ports, such as Calcutta, have to sail around Sri Lanka to reach their destination.

Apart from shortening the distance by 424 nautical miles, the travelling time will also be reduced by 30 hours once the canal is commissioned. This, in turn, will mean a big reduction in shipping costs, said shipping ministry officials.

The government, port authorities and public sector companies are expected to participate in the equity of the project.

The dredging of the shallow waters to the north of Sri Lanka will create a navigable canal across the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay and the Palk Strait.

An environmental impact assessment report has already been drawn up by the Nagpur -based National Environment Engineering Research Institute (Neeri), although there are reports that it has no previous experience in marine projects of this nature.

According to the executive summary of this report, the canal has to be 14.5-metre deep to allow ships with a draught of up to 12.8 metres to sail through.

These would include bulk carriers of 65,000 DWT and 240-m long container vessels of 56,000 DWT.

In order to create this passage, two channels would have to be dredged, one across Adam’s bridge (the chain of islets and shallows linking India with Sri Lanka) just south-east of Pamban island and another through the shallows of Palk Bank, deepening the Palk Straits.

The total length of these two channels would be 56 km.

The initial excavations would produce over 80 million cubic metres of dredged silt and sand and subsequent maintenance dredging works would require to remove 100,000 cubic metres of silt and sand every year.