Talasari(Balasore): The Odisha chief minister,Naveen Patnaik, laid the foundation stone for the much-awaited Subarnarekha port, here on Wednesday.

The Subarnarekha Port will be developed by Tata Steel with an investment of Rs 5000 crore. The port will be enable to handle 25-55 million tonnes of cargo per annum and create job opportunity for 12,000 persons.

The state government had signed a Concessional Agreement (CA) with Channai based Creative Infrastructure for development of the port on the river mouth of Subarnarekha. However, the port work could not be progressed due to objections from the union ministry of defence even though there was environmental clearances for the project. It was last year the project got the defence ministry clearances only on last year.

However, in the meanwhile, Tata Steel acquired 51% stake in the Subarnarekha Port Private Ltd. (SPPL) project and showed keen interest to develop the project. With Tata Steel’s experience in developing the Dhamra green-field port project, thing started moving very fast..

The state government has already handed over 692.68 acres of the total 961.18 acre land required for construction of the port to the project developers. he rest will be handed over soon, assured the chief secretary, AP Padhi.

Initially, the Subaranarekha port will have a capacity of 10 million mtpa with an ultimate capacity of 40 mtpa in 10 years