BD to go for rly purchases with funds from ADB

Having failed to procure metre-gauge (MG) passenger carriages and locomotives under India's US$800 million line of credit (LoC), Bangladesh has planned to make such major railway purchases with ADB financing.     

Officials said Saturday 214 carriages and 10 engines willbought shortly for the railway.

The Ministry of Railway (MoR) officials said since India does only build broad-gauge (BG) passenger carriages, the Bangladesh Railway (BR) ailed to procure the necessary MG carriages and locomotives under the Indian line of credit.

Instead, BR was forced to procure only BG passenger carriages and locomotives from India under the LoC.

"Now we have decided to buy the carriages and locomotives under two separate projects with the financial support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB)," said one MoR official.

Bangladesh will procure 214 MG passenger and 50 BG carriages at a cost of Tk 14.06 billion, and 10 MG locomotives, two BG cranes and one simulator at a cost of Tk 7.85 billion under the financial support of the ADB, the official said.

The ADB will provide US$200 million worth of loan to bankroll both the procurement projects.

Nearly four years ago, the BR had prepared two separate project proposals-Procurement of 150 MG passenger carriages and Procurement of 264 MG passenger carriages and two BG inspection cars-under the $800 million Indian LoC.

The government sent a list of projects, including the above two, to the Indian government for approval. But New Delhi regretted that they do not make any railway equipment for the metre-gauge lines.

Then those two projects were dropped from the list of the LoC and the BR failed to buy the necessary carriages and locomotives, the MoR officials said.

Currently, the state-owned rail-service provider has 1,165 MG passenger carriages in its fleet, mostly outmoded. Out of the total, nearly 600 coaches have almost expired their economic age having been used over the last 30 years.

Besides, the BR has had also 324 BG passenger coaches of which 78 have crossed their standard economic life.

Rail officials said they had shortage of passenger carriages and engines to serve passengers on the 2,877 kilometres of rail-routes across the country.

They said the shortages of locomotives, carriages and manpower have been affecting their plan to improve rail services-most economical transport facilities for passengers and freights.

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