The Calcutta Port Trust on Saturday introduced a logistics data bank that aims to track container cargo almost on a real time basis using radio frequency identification services.

According to port officials, the service will allow different stakeholders such as exporters, importers, shipping lines and freight forwarders to check the movement of containers.

Officials said the scanning of containers will take place at port gates, container freight stations, inland container depots and identified toll plazas. Each container will have a radio frequency ID (RFID) tag which will be tracked through different RFID readers installed at these locations.

As a result, it will now be possible for stakeholders to identify bottlenecks the and logistics choke points and facilitate smooth flow of containers between the port and hinterland. It will also facilitate transparency in dwell time at the container freight station for both the import and export cycle.

The initiative is also expected to cut logistics cost, which is high in India at 14 per cent compared with 7-8 per cent in developed nations.

The Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC) and NEC Corporation, Japan, are jointly working on the logistics data bank project announced in 2016.

While JNPT and Mundra Port were among the ports that had initially adopted the system, Calcutta, Tuticorin and Chennai recently implemented it.

Land allotted

Bengal industries and finance minister Amit Mitra on Saturday said the state was ready to offer 2,000 acres at Raghunathpur for the Amritsar-Calcutta Industrial Corridor project that extends from Amritsar in Punjab to Dankuni in Bengal.

The project is conceived taking the eastern dedicated freight corridor, a 1,839km railway freight line, as the backbone. Under the Amritsar-Calcutta Industrial Corridor project, integrated manufacturing clusters are proposed for development.

One of the key challenges for the project was availability of land and Mitra said Bengal was among the few states that has already decided to allot land for the project.