Co-financiers' meet on Padma Bridge ends without decision

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Munima Sultana
The meeting of co-financing monitoring committee of the Padma Bridge project ended Wednesday without any major decision as the Japanese funding agency insisted on building separate structures for road and rail.
The government wants the bridge to have two tiers with the provisions of both road and rail track.
Officials said the co-financiers comprising all development partners of the multi-donor project and implementing agency Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) held a threadbare discussion on various technical and financing issues on the last day.
But they are yet to come to a consensus on the major issue due to Japan's uncompromising stand, the officials said.
The Japanese government's International Cooperating Agency (JICA) has been advocating separation of the sub-structure from superstructure of the bridge saying its financial cooperation will depend on acceptance of its proposition.
Although other two major lenders -- the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) - initially raised the issue they have now agreed to the government's decision to make the bridge two tiers, road on the top and rail below.
The consensus in the co-financing meeting was necessary to call the pre-qualification tender for the country's single largest project as per the government's schedule to complete the bridge by 2013 before the next election.
The BBA earlier prepared a schedule to invite the PQ tender on February 11/12 to start construction if the bridge in October considering the priority of present government.
Due to the JICA's stand, release of the PQ document by the donor has become uncertain as many decisions regarding PQ depend on it.
However, a senior BBA official dismissed the chance of a delay in construction of the bridge saying the meeting has not either disapproved the government's schedule to carry on the project to meet the completion target by 2013.
The official also said the visiting joint mission, which is represented by development partners --WB, ADB, JICA and Islamic Development Bank (IDB) -- is expected to hold internal meetings to come out with a decision.
The mission that arrived here on Sunday and will stay until mid February.
The official said that the World Bank, the project's coordinating agency, will now play its role to get a final decision.
"The decision to construct the two-tier bridge has been final and it is now the lenders' decision to reach an agreement," he said.
World Bank and ADB have assured of enhancing loan to $1.20 billion and $550 million respectively from their earlier pledges of $460 million and $300 million. The IDB also committed to increase their lending. But the JICA assistance remained the same at $ 300 million considering the Japanese government annual commitment.
The Padma multipurpose bridge will be 6.15 km in length and 21.10 metre in width with a four-lane road on the top and a broad-gauge rail lane below. It will have 150 spans with four-km approach road at Mawa and 12km other side. The project cost has scaled up from $ 1.8 billion to $ 2.4 billion following the decision to construct the two-tier bridge with steel-truss-composite and separate approach roads for rail and road.