Building an inland container terminal (ICD) at Dhirasram near Gazipur, aimed at augmenting rail-freight services, stalls as Bangladesh Railways couldn't commence its physical support works long after the project approval, sources say.
"Due to various clerical errors in the project documents, work has yet to begin, and employees have gone unpaid for the last four months," says a senior official of the Railways.
The Ministry of Railways recently convened a meeting of the Divisional Project Evaluation Committee (DPEC) to make necessary revisions to the project, which was approved in mid-2023, according to the sources.
With estimated cost of Tk 34.03 billion, the project has a provision of some 231 acres of land acquisition for constructing ICD and constructing 10.5-kilometre tracks from Pubail to Dhirashram.
Under the project, aimed at boosting cargo transportation by rail, 175 metres of major bridges and 35 metres of minor bridges are supposed to be constructed.
However, the construction of minor bridges would be dropped from the project, reveals the minutes of the DPEC meeting, presided over by Fahimul Islam, Secretary, the Ministry of Railways.
The proceedings reveal that the project has an allocation worth Tk 360 million in the current fiscal year, but only Tk 2.83 million had been released in the first two quarters of the fiscal.
The project achieved no physical progress with a spending of 3.5 per cent of the total project cost.
"The project has a timeline to complete all of the activities by September 2026, which would remain unmet due to initial delays," says one BR official.
Once completed, the Dhirasram ICD will be able to handle 400,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers a year, five times higher than that of Kamalapur ICD, bringing about massive changes in freight-train transportation, reveals project document.
"As a result, the pressure on transportation of containers on roads would be reduced while there would be no need for container-laden trains plying to Dhaka," it adds.
The proposed ICD will also boost the revenue of Bangladesh Railways through operations of more container trains while industrialisation in this region would also be expedited.
Besides, this ICD will act as an important hub once the transit with Nepal and Bhutan is launched.
Officials have said the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the project aimed at building a full-fledged ICD under Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in July 2013.
Finding no suitable private investor, Bangladesh Railways in August 2020 decided to construct Dhirasram ICD with government funds.
In December 2020, the ADB pledged $200 million in loans for the project and in January 2021, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) decided to implement the project through ADB funding.
But, two months later, the PMO changed its stance and decided to build the ICD in collaboration with Dubai-based logistics supplier DP World under a US$1.0-billion investment proposal the firm had made at the beginning of 2020.
The company wanted to invest the money in Bangladesh's container-supply-chain infrastructure, including ports, rail networks, and inland container terminals.
But, the authorities have had to shed the plan to make DP World a partner in the venture.
The ongoing project will create necessary infrastructure for the ICD which would be developed and operated by the PPP investors.
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