Bhubaneswar: Following Defence Ministry's nod for proposed port project on the Subarnarekha River mouth on the Bay of Bengal in Balasore district, the decks were cleared for the project and construction will begin from October.

The Subarnarekha port will be developed at cost of Rs 4,000 crore and the project will begin from October, informed Commerce and Transport Minister Dr Nrusingha Charan Sahu after chairing a meeting here today.

The project work will be completed in 36 months and there is no problem relating to land acquisition for the port, he said.

In June, the defence ministry had given clearance for the construction of Subarnarekha port in Odisha.

An all-weather deep-draft commercial port at Subarnarekha River to be developed by the Chennai-based Creative Port Private Ltd (CPPL) will have an initial capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). It will be raised to 40 MTPA over 10 years.

Worth mentioning, CPPL had signed an MoU with the State government on December 18, 2006 to develop the project. Later, the revenue sharing agreement was inked between the two on January 11, 2008.

Meanwhile, Tata Steel has signed an agreement with CPPL to get 51 percent equity in the port project from the original promoters.

Centre gave environment clearance to the proposed port project in 2012. However, the project could not be executed with the objections raised by the defence ministry. Later, the ministry gave conditional clearance on June 5.