Trial runs of vessels between Kolkata and Chattogram ports, meant to tranship cargoes to Indian seven-sister states, are unlikely to be launched soon, officials have said.
India has yet to seek permission for this, they added.
"We have not received any request from India until now to launch the run," shipping secretary Abdus Samad has told the FE.
Chairman of Chittagong Port Authority, CPA, Zulfiqur Aziz recently insisted two trial runs will take place in January.
He said the port was ready to cater the service for the transshipment of goods.
The authority's spokesperson Omar Faruk told the FE last week he was unaware of any development in this connection.
"I have no information about it. May be the chairman is looking after it," he said.
The chairman could not be reached over telephone for comments, despite several attempts during the last couple of days. Even he did not reply to a short message.
Dhaka granted permission to New Delhi for using Chittagong and Mongla ports for the movement of goods to and from India back in June 2015 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh.
Later, in October 2018, an agreement was signed between officials of the two countries for the same purpose.
The two sides signed standard operating procedure last October on the use of Chittagong and Mongla ports for the movement of goods to and from India.
The neighbouring giant is mainly interested in carrying goods using the Chittagong and Mongla ports to feed its seven-sister states--Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura.
Indian vehicles currently need to travel 1,650 kilometres to transport goods from Kolkata to Agartala through Guwahati in the landlocked north.
But that distance will go down by almost one-fifth if the vehicles take a cross-border trip through Bangladesh's Ashuganj river port.
The distance will also decrease if goods-laden water vessels from Kolkata reach the Chittagong port and later carried to the north eastern states by road.
India is already enjoying multimodal transit and transhipment facilities to carry its goods through the Bangladesh territory.
In November last, after carrying bulk cargos for several years, India for the first time, carried containerised cargo through the Indo-Bangladesh river protocol route to Assam's Guwahati from West Bengal's Haldia port.
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