About 1,000 tonnes of stone aggregates from Bhutan are the first waterways consignment that will be ferried to Bangladesh via the Brahmaputra river, according to a report published on http://www.kuenselonline.com/.
The consignment is lifted Tuesday from Dhubri Port in Assam in India.
In three days, it will reach the Narayanganj Port in Bangladesh.
Dhubri port is about 160km away from Phuentsholing, a border town in southern Bhutan. The port Dhubri is under the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI).
With this first shipment, Bhutanese exporters and importers now have an additional leeway of transport route with Bangladesh, which is comparatively cheaper than road transportation.
To mark this event, the general secretary of Bhutan Exporters Association (BEA), the proprietor of Bhutan Stones and Minerals (BSM), who is exporting the first consignment, and officials from IWAI and a Kolkata based shipping company met on July 7 at Dhubri Port.
BEA general secretary Tshering Yeshi said it was a much-awaited event.
"It is historic," he said, adding that it took almost two months to come to this point.
Tshering Yeshi said that the "flagship" consignment was possible after India and Bangladesh declared Dhubri Port as "port of call."
The Bhutan government had taken it to the Indian government to assist in using the Dhubri Port for transit route for transit cargo.
Accordingly, a standard operating procedure (SOP) was developed and signed during Bhutan Prime Minister Lotay Tshering's visit to Dhaka in mid April this year.
Cooperation on inland waterways was one of the five bilateral instruments signed then.
To study the feasibility of the inland waterways, BEA and trade officials also recently travelled to Bangladesh using the same waterways route via Chilmari Port and Mongla Port.
"We found it is feasible and the depth of the river is satisfactory and even convenient in monsoons," BEA general secretary Tshering Yeshi said.
With the opening of the inland waterways route to Bangladesh, the cost of transportation would decrease by at least 30 per cent compared to surface transportation, officials said.
The distance to Dhubri, the third largest city in Assam, from Gelephu in Bhutan is about 135km.
This means export of riverbed materials (RBM) from Gelephu, Nganglam and Samdrupjongkhar would be easier and cheaper from Dhubri Port. After unloading the materials, the trucks can also return the same day from Dhubri.
On that day, trucks from Gelephu travel 281km to reach Nakugaon in Bangladesh and have to cross Assam and Meghalaya.
Exporters from Phuentsholing and Samtse travel 156km to reach the India-Bangladesh border Changrabandha-Burimari. Trucks also ferry 97km to reach another border point at Fulbari-Banglabandha.
It takes at least seven days for one truck carrying an average weight of 40MT to make a round trip. Transportation cost of Nu 850-900 is charged for ferrying one MT load. A truck also pays detention charge of Nu 1,500 per day.
Importers from Bangladesh then bear the transportation cost from border areas. This has affected the final price of stone aggregates and other RBMs.
Further, the expenditure increases when problems arise and trucks are stuck at the border areas. Trucks sometime have to halt for more than 10 days.
From the inland waterways, it costs Nu 1,000 per MT to reach Narayanganj Port in Dhaka from Dhubri.
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