Three more landports will be handed over to pvt operators

Siddique Islam | Published: August 06, 2008 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Three more landports will be handed over to private operators under Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) arrangement for a period 25 years by 2009 to help boost cross border trade, officials said.

The landports that will be handed over to private operators in the second phase are Tamabil in Sylhet, Akhaura in Brahmanbaria and Burimari in Lalmonirhat.

The first meeting of Pre-qualification and Tender Evaluation Committee (PTEC) is scheduled to be held at the Bangladesh Land Port Authority (BLPA) office in Dhaka next Sunday, they added.

"We're now preparing the ground works to privatise the landports by the next year," a BLPA senior official told the FE Monday.

The BLPA has earlier handed over six landports out of 12 to private operators in line with the government decision, he added.

The ports that have already been transferred through open tenders to the private operators include Sona Masjid in Chapai Nawabganj, Hili in Dinajpur, Banglabandha in Panchagarh, Bibir Bazar in Comilla, Birol in Dinajpur and Teknaf in Cox's Bazar.

The government earlier decided to hand over the operations of the country's 12 landports to the private operators in phases under the BOT arrangement to gear up cross border trade with neighbouring countries.

According to the earlier decision, Bhomra in Satkhira, Darshona in Chuadanga and Haluaghat in Mymensingh will also be transferred to the private sector in the third phase after successful completion of the second phase.

But, the BLPA has recommended the government to continue the operation of Bhomra landport under public management and drop the name of Haluaghat in Mymensingh from the list.

"We've submitted such recommendations to the government aiming to run the ports properly," another BLPA official said, adding that they want to include the name of Jibonnagor land port in the list instead of Darshona in Chuadanga to strengthen trade relations with India.