The Mongla port jetty construction project makes no headway since its approval by the government more than one year ago allegedly due to India's interference using its influence on the ousted Sheikh Hasina government.
The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council approved the Development Project Proposal (DPP) on September 12, 2023 which was supposed to be implemented with Chinese funding worth US$ 400 million, officials said.
However, four months after the ECNEC nod, the Ministry of Shipping received a letter (on December 14 of the same year) from the Physical Infrastructure Division of the Planning Commission, asking it to form a committee and resubmit the project proposal after re-evaluation.
A committee, headed by the Mongla port chairman, was also formed to review the project and re-submit it to the ECNEC.
Meanwhile, India had also expressed interest to finance the project under its third line of credit, but they also could not make any progress other than just appointing a consulting firm to conduct a feasibility study, said the officials.
Of late, the committee submitted a re-evaluation report to the Ministry of Shipping a couple of months back, but the ministry is yet to forward it to the ECNEC.
Shipping Adviser Brig Gen (retd.) Sakhawat Hossain has recently said the ministry was trying to lower the project cost through negotiation with the developers. This initiative also fell flat so far, sources said.
A senior official at the ministry told the FE that the project is unlikely to make any tangible progress during the regime of the interim government as it shows 'little interest' in processing development projects.
Contacted, an official at the Chinese-government designated company, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), did not want to comment over the project delays.
Under the 'Expansion and Development of Mongla Port Facilities' project China had agreed to invest US$400 million to build two container jetties to enhance handling capacity of the country's second seaport.
The project implementation was supposed to begin on July 1 this year, but to avail so far. Officials said that once the re-evaluated DPP secures approval, a deal between the two governments will be signed to implement the project.
The Mongla Port Authority had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the CCECC authority on August 24, 2021 and the latter submitted its financial bid and technical proposal on January 28, 2023.
'Expansion and Modernisation of Mongla Port Facilities' was listed among the 27 development projects that China pledged to fund by signing an umbrella deal back in 2016 during president Xi Jinping's visit to Dhaka.
The project aims to construct two container jetties with a length of 368 metres each, 87,600 square-metre loaded container yard, 34,170 square-metre empty-container yard, and 4,260 square-metre hazardous cargo-handling yard.
Moreover, four gantry cranes, seven rubber-tyre gantry cranes and 33 types of jetty-related equipment will be bought under the project.
The two new jetties are expected to enhance Mongla port's container-handling capacity by 394,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per annum.
syful-islam@outlook.com