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On June 29, 2026, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited (APSEZ) announced that it was selling 49% of its stake in its subsidiary Adani Vizhinjam Port Private Limited (AVPPL), which runs the Vizhinjam port in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. According to the press releases, the buyer of the stake is the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s largest container shipping company. But if you read the fine print, the real buyer is a company called Mundi Limited, registered in Cyprus. Mundi Limited’s directors are professional caretakers in the city of Limassol and the names of its owners do not appear in any public record in India.,

The news headlines called it a $ 2.85 billion deal – about Rs 27,500 crore – and the “largest foreign investment in an Indian port.” The government of Kerala, by its own admission, first learnt of it on the news.

These events should trouble every Kerala resident because Vizhinjam is not Adani’s port in any honest sense of the word. It is Kerala’s port. The public paid for most of it. Adani’s response may be that no port is being sold, only shares in a company that holds the right to operate it until 2060. It is precisely so; what is being traded over Kerala’s head is the income of a public asset for decades to come. Yet under the agreement signed in 2015, the public was promised almost nothing in return. It is this bonanza of 2015 that the present deal is designed to cash in.

A port built with public money, promised away for Rs 1 a year

At the outset, it should be clear that the Vizhinjam port is a genuine national asset. The case for building it was always sound. The port is already drawing transshipment business to the Indian coast that Colombo once monopolised. Nothing in what follows in this article is an argument against the port. The question is a different one: who captures the value that a public investment of this scale creates?

Let us return to August 2015. The Vizhinjam port project was, for years, called commercially unviable. It was said that no private company would touch it without offers of extraordinary sweeteners. On that premise, the United Democratic Front (UDF) government of Oommen Chandy, along with the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi, signed a concession agreement with the Adani group that contained one of the most generous concessions ever offered by an Indian state.

Consider what Kerala gave. The state ended up bearing roughly 70% of the cost of the Phase 1 i.e., the phase that built the port that exists today. But in Phase 2 that is to begin now, the capital cost falls on the concessionaire. In Phase 1, the government of Kerala spent about Rs 5,500 crore from its own budget for the breakwater, land and connected works, and has committed another Rs 1,500 crore for the rail link. These are in addition to the state government’s share of the viability gap subsidy. 

Consider what Kerala received in return. The 2015 agreement fixed the concession i.e., Adani’s right to run the port and keep its earnings, for four decades. Originally 40 years to 2055, this period was stretched to 2060 in 2024 as part of a settlement that condoned Adani’s five-year delay in construction. The “concession fee” payable to the state was set, in black and white, at Re 1 a year. A share of revenue was promised only from December 2034 i.e., 19 years after the agreement was signed. Even then, the share of revenue will  start at just 1%, and will rise by one percentage point a year. 

If the port is handed back to the government of Kerala in 2060, Kerala’s share in the port’s revenue would have crept up to just over 25% in the final year. But the average for the period between 2015 and 2060 will be far less. If we put all of Kerala’s future receipts under this schedule into today’s money, they are worth roughly Rs 1,200 crore – against about Rs 7,000 crore of public expenditure.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had examined the 2015 contract and found it heavily loaded in the concessionaire’s favour. The one serious correction came later: in 2024, the state government’s fresh settlement with Adani forced the port’s Phase 2 to be completed by 2028 itself. The original obligation was to complete Phase 2 by the earlier of 30 years (2045) or five years after the port ran above 75% capacity for three consecutive years. That fresh settlement of 2024 also refused to postpone the date of revenue-sharing beyond 2034 despite giving Adani five extra years to finish construction. That episode proved something important – that the 2015 agreement can be reopened if and when a government has the will.

A Malta-flagged container ship MSC Trieste arrives at Vizhinjam International Seaport, in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Friday, July 10, 2026. Photo: PTI.

What is actually being sold in 2026, and what is not

Let us now come to the June 2026 transaction. The bombastic headline numbers evaporate on a closer analysis. Adani’s own filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) provides a valuation of AVPPL at “$ 2.85 billion” or Rs 27,431 crore (assuming 1 US $ = Rs 96.249). Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), the terminal operating arm of the MSC Group, is purchasing 49% of this value, or $1.39 billion. The BSE filing splits this into two different parts. The first part is $539 million or about Rs 5,187 crore. This is the actual price for 49% of the port as it exists today under Phase 1. We will return to this amount soon. 

The second part is $858 million or about Rs 8,258 crore. This is MSC’s 49% share of the........

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