India-Myanmar Kaladan Waterway: Kolkata Port To Flag Off First Trial Movement Of Cargo Ship To Sittwe Port On 4 May

A cargo ship will set sail from the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port (SMP) in Kolkata on 4 may, for a trial run to test the new facility at Sittwe in Myanmar, as per a statement by Union minister Santanu Thakur.

A shipment of 300 tonnes of cement from Ramco Cements Limited will be exported to Myanmar through this transit, as per reports.

"This will connect Myanmar through inland waterways and it will open another gateway to North East via Sittwe Port," Thakur said.

The ship is scheduled to arrive in Sittwe Port on 9 May.

The Indian team, headed by Sarbananda Sonowal, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways, will hold a reception ceremony for the vessel, according to government sources.

This initiative is a component of the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport project — which is a joint effort between India and Myanmar.

The project aims to improve transportation infrastructure in Southwestern Myanmar and north-eastern India by creating an alternative route to India's landlocked north-eastern states.

Currently, the access to the seven states is through the Siliguri Corridor — a narrow strip of Indian land located between Nepal and Bangladesh and commonly referred to as the "Chicken's Neck".

The key components of the project include — the establishment of a deepwater port at the Kaladan River mouth in Sittwe, the dredging of the river to enable cargo vessels to travel from Sittwe to Mizoram in India, the construction of a river port in Paletwa located in Myanmar's Chin State, and the enhancement of highways from Paletwa to Myeikwa on the Indo-Myanmar border.

With the developments, it will provide connectivity to the North East region — from Kolkata Port through Sittwe Port up to Paletwa in Myanmar by waterway and Paletwa to Zorinpui by road in Mizoram.

Further, the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port recently announced that it has handled 65.66 million tonnes of cargo in the 2022-23 financial year — up by 12.87 per cent.

It clocked a net surplus (profit) of Rs 304 crore in FY'23, increasing by over 152 per cent from Rs 120 crore in the previous fiscal.