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Chennai Port signs pact with Canadian port

By IANS,

Chennai : Chennai Port and Canada’s Port of Halifax have signed an agreement for cooperation in port management activities, it was announced here Wednesday.

“The MOU (memorandum of understanding) will enable sharing of knowledge in managing ports and terminals,” Chennai Port chairman K. Suresh told reporters.

According to Halifax Port chief executive and president Karen Oldfield, the pact is the first one it had signed with a South East Asian port.

Oldfield said 35 percent of the Canadian port’s traffic is from South East Asia, and nearly a third of that is from India.

Agreeing that the global economic downturn has affected the port business, she said traffic from South East Asian countries has nonetheless gone up.

The container terminal at Halifax Port handles around 1.5 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) and has the capacity to handle 2.5 million TEUs.