Question

The natural seaport of India from where spices, tea, coffee, sugar and coconut oil are mostly exported is ______________.
A. Kandla
B. Chennai
C. Visakhapatnam
D. Kochi

Answer 1

Hint: As India is a peninsular country, it has a long coastline of 7516.6 km. Inland waterways account for transportation of goods and services within the country and maritime transportation accounts for a majority of goods trade both in the form of imports and exports. The ports and harbours located in the nine coastal states of India— Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal are administered and maintained by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways in India.

Complete answer:
Option A: is incorrect. The Deendayal Port Trust in the Kutch district of Gujarat, also known as Kandla port is a natural port located in the Gulf of Kutch. The Kandla port deals with the largest volume of cargo in India which is about 110.10 million tonnes per annum as of 2018. Much of its growth in the volume of cargo has come from transporting crude oil imports from Essar Oil’s refinery at Vadinar, Gujarat.
Option B: is incorrect. The Chennai Port formerly known as the Madras port is an artificially constructed port in Tamil Nadu that is also the second-largest container port in India after the Mumbai Port. Oil and motors are the chief imports at this port and groundnuts, granite and ores are the largest exports at this port.
Option C: is incorrect. The Visakhapatnam Port is the fourth-largest port in India in terms of volume of cargo and the only major port in Andhra Pradesh. It deals mainly with the export of iron ore to Japan and other minerals like coal.
Option D: is correct. The Kochi port lies on the islands in Vembanad Lake in Kochi, Kerala and also has a shipyard which is the largest shipbuilding and maintenance facility in India. Historically and even today, the Kochi port has been used to export spices, salt, coffee and coconut oil through the Suez Canal route to Europe.
Hence, the correct option is D.

Note: The ports in India can be classified into major, minor and intermediate ports and all in all there are 13 major ports and 187 minor and intermediate ports. The major ports handle over $70\%$ of all cargo traffic in India. The state that contains the most number of ports in India is Maharashtra (52) followed by Gujarat (40), Tamil Nadu (15) and Karnataka (10).