India will soon start dredging a new 167-kilometer-long (104-mile-long) sea channel in southern India so ships following the Indian coastline don't have to make a detour around Sri Lanka, a government official said Friday. «Indian ships will save at least 30 hours and 400 nautical miles by sailing through the new channel,» said V. V. Ramamurthy, an official of the southern Tuticorin port, which is heading the dredging project, AP said. The channel between India and Sri Lanka is currently too shallow to allow ships to pass through it. The Sethusamudram project, which will cost US$550 million (¤435.06 million), was approved Thursday by the federal cabinet. «When work is completed, India will have a continuous, navigable sea lane along its eastern and western coasts,» Ramamurthy said on Friday. The dredging project, originally conceived by British colonialists in 1860, was never implemented as successive governments doubted its economic benefits. There were at least 15 surveys done in as many decades, with fluctuating cost estimates and project specifications and occasional doubts about the environmental safety. But Ramamurthy said the project will increase traffic at the Tuticorin port, near the southern tip of India's mainland, and decrease costs.
