Work to construct ICD at Gazipur begins this year

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Jasim Uddin Haroon
The government will construct an inland container depot (ICD) at Gazipur at a cost of Tk 7.67 billion to reduce the pressure on the ICD in Dhaka.
Sources at the Ministry of Shipping said the ICD will be designed to cope with the expected higher business growth in the next 15 years.
The construction of the ICD might start sometime this year on 317 acres of lands at Dhirasrom, Gazipur.
Acquisition of land has been completed, the ministry sources said adding the construction work of the ICD is expected to be completed in 2011.
The ICD will be able to accommodate at least 550,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) containers a year.
Besides, it will be connected with the Chittagong port through rail to expedite cargo movement.
The sources said the project will be jointly financed by the World Bank and the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA).
CPA sources added the capacity of the Dhaka ICD, which was built in late 1980, is around 80,000 containers a year. The Dhaka ICD, however, handles beyond its capacity, they said
The rush of cargo at the ICD is growing on an average at a rate of 10 per cent a year.
They also said the Dhaka ICD handled a total of 86,000 containers in 2006 and it is expected that the terminal might handle 95,000 this year.
Officials at the Dhaka ICD said around 60 per cent of cargoes it handles belong to the Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ) at Savar.
The officials at the CPA hinted that the new ICD would be able to provide better services to the industrial units located at the zone area.
The country's business community has hailed the move on construction of the ICD at Savar as the Dhaka ICD has been facing manifold problems.
Inland delivery from the Dhaka ICD is being obstructed following restriction of lorry movement at daytime
Businesses said the new ICD will minimise the cost of export-bound cargoes.
Currently, the freight charge of covered vans to and from Chittagong is around Tk 10,000 for each trip while carrying goods through the trains is less than half of that.
President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) Anowar-Ul-Alam Chowdhury Pervez told the FE Friday that the theft of export bound goods and other problems relating to transportation would be removed because of the construction of the new ICD.
He said a large quantity of Dhaka-bound capital machinery for different industrial units, including the apparel sector, is currently stockpiled at Chittagong port due to lack of space at the Dhaka ICD and insufficient train services.