Rupayan to build $40m ICD in N'ganj

FE Team | Published: December 14, 2009 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Mushir Ahmed
Leading real estate developer Rupayan Group would build the country's largest private port cum inland container depot at Narayanganj at US$40 million -- a move set to revolutionise riverine transportation and cut container movement cost by 60 per cent.
Rupayan Port and Logistics Limited, a subsidiary of the group, has got government approval to build a 350,000 TEU (twenty equivalent unit container) capacity ICD along with a jetty on a 27-acre of land in Bandar from March next year, its consultant Mahboob Ahmed of Shipwrights told the FE Sunday.
Details of the project would be unveiled next week to global shipping agents, local ship-builders and traders in a bid to drum up support and highlight the benefits of using riverine route for container transportation between Chittagong and Narayanganj and with Kolkata.
Mahboob said construction of the port with full customs facilities would be completed by September 2011, making it the biggest private ICD in Bangladesh and the second largest after the Chittagong port-owned Newmooring Container Terminal.
"We have readied financing and bought land for the project. Quay length of its jetty would be 240 metres and it can load and unload three container vessels a day," he said.
Mahboob said the opening of RPPL along with the state-owned ICD at Pangaon in Narayanganj in mid-2010 would "revolutionise" container transportation between Dhaka and Chittagong -- the country's two main economic hubs.
Together, the two ICDs would handle about half a million TEUs, which would be one-third of the total container expected to be loaded and unloaded at the Chittagong Port by 2012.
Containers arriving at the country's premier seaport in Chittagong would be brought by some 40 purpose-built inland container vessels through the riverine route to Narayanganj.
"It would trim inland container transportation cost by at least 60 per cent. It will be safer than road and rail routes. Road transport very often leads to accidents and too much costly while a container has to stand on a queue for seven days for railway," he said.
Chittagong Port last year handled more than one million 20-feet containers, with 83 per cent of the cargoes bound to factories and traders based in greater Dhaka.
An exporter or a trader spends some Tk30,000 to bring a 40-feet container to Dhaka by trailer, which eats up a good portion of an exporter's profit and adds extra cost to imported items.
As a result, many traders have to un-stuff their containers in Chittagong before bringing the goods to Dhaka through lorries.
Mahboob said cost of transportation would be brought down to Tk 12,000 if the containers are brought by inland container vessels to be purpose-built for the two inland ports.