Mumbai: Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust gets new high speed scanner

The state owned Jawaharlal Nehru Port JNPT, the leader among the ports handling the highest number of containers in the country, has one more feather in its cap. The high speed scanner which was commissioned in the port on December Second has the capacity to scan one hundred containers per hour.

A spokesman of the Mumbai Customs said their capacity to scan containers will go up three times. Earlier, we used to scan around 2 lakh containers. Now, we will be able to scan nearly 6 lakh.  Currently, JNPT can scan 7 to 10 per cent of the containers that come in daily. Officials from the Customs Department at JNPT are hopeful of cutting down the processing time of trucks and improving ranking in the ease of doing business category

With a new high speed, an advanced scanner at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), the country’s biggest container port handling over 44 per cent of containerized cargo, it will now be able to scan around 25 per cent of goods and containers.

Special Secretary and Member (Customs), Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, Pranab Kumar Das, inaugurated the scanner at a function held in the port on December Second. It has been installed at the Jawaharlal Nehru Customs House, Nhava Sheva.

Officials from the Customs Department at JNPT are hopeful of cutting down the processing time of trucks and improving ranking in the ease of doing business category. The new drive-through facility can scan 100 containers in an hour.

“Currently, we have two scanners — one is fixed and the other is mobile. But with the drive-through scanner, it will be a time saving process. We intend to have four more mobile scanners.

With the new facility, India is targeting to jump to the Top 50 of ease of doing business rankings. This year itself, we have jumped 66 places — from 146 to 80 — in ranking,” Das said. The government has spent around Rs 31 crore on the project.