Forty-eight companies have signaled their readiness to make investments in Chabahar’s Shahid Baheshti Port projects from March 21 to Nov. 21, indicating a 33% rise in the number of investment bids compared with the similar period of last year, Behrouz Aqaei, director general of Ports and Maritime Organization of Sistan-Baluchestan Province, said.
Noting that 150 foreign and domestic delegations visited Chabahar and 14 contracts worth over 10,000 billion rials ($78 million) were signed with private sector companies last year, Aqaei predicted that investments worth 6,000 billion rials ($47 million) will be made in Iran’s only oceanic port town by the end of the current fiscal year (March 19, 2020), News.mrud.ir reported.
The first phase of Chabahar Port was inaugurated in December 2017 by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan.
The opening of the first phase of Shahid Beheshti Port (out of five phases defined for the project), which has tripled its capacity to 8.5 million tons (equal to that of all the northern ports of the country), allows the docking of super-large container ships (between 100,000 DWT and 120,000 DWT) and increase India’s connectivity with Afghanistan.
India Global Ports Limited has been tasked with administering and running the terminal of the first phase of Shahid Beheshti Port.
“The entity is planning to invest $500 million over the next 10 years in the port,” Alireza Jahan, the representative of IGPL’s Iranian partner, said.
