BD turns to Bhutan for help from WB

Dhaka has sought Thimphu's opinion about whether it is interested to join a consortium aiming to get regional IDA assistance from the World Bank to increase navigability on Indo-Bangla water protocol route through dredging, officials said.
To get the assistance from International Development Association (IDA) for a regional project, involvement of at least three countries and requests from them are required, they added.
During the Bangladesh-India shipping secretary level meeting, held in April 2015 in New Delhi, the two sides agreed to maintain navigability on the protocol route through necessary dredging.
They also decided to seek one-third of the total cost from the World Bank and the rest to be borne by the two countries.
However, a World Bank delegation in a recent meeting at the Ministry of Shipping (MoS) informed that involvement of at least three regional countries is needed to get the IDA assistance.
The delegation also informed that Bhutan has an interest in getting involved in  expansion of regional trade activities. They said the Himalayan kingdom can be a good choice for inclusion as a third country in the activities relating to maintaining navigability on Indo-Bangla protocol route.
However, the delegation members said they are yet to receive any request from Bhutan for the regional initiative for dredging the protocol route.
Sources said the MoS through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently sought to know from Bhutan whether it is interested to join the project. If found interested, the country will be asked to send request to the World Bank for the IDA assistance, they said.
Officials said the government of Bangladesh is holding talks with the World Bank for the assistance. The IDA assistance will be around US$ 280 million which will help improve inland water transport services on the Dhaka-Chittagong IWT (inland waterway transport) corridor.
The country office of the Bank on June 13 confirmed the assistance by forwarding an aide-memoire after fielding a preparation mission.
Chairman of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) Mozammel Haque earlier told the FE that the World Bank will conduct a feasibility study on the proposed project by December next.
If everything found okay, the project will be submitted before the bank's board in mid-March next year and the work will start sometime in next June, he said.
He said the country's rivers need capital dredging to ensure navigability for plying of vessels. "The problem of navigability on inland river routes will be over once the said project is completed."
According to the aide-memoire, the thriving Bangladesh's waterways are already providing service to more than 50 per cent of the country's cargo traffic and one quarter of all passenger traffic. "The objective of the project is to increase these numbers as well as to open up service for container traffic."
It said the Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Ashuganj routes are not only needed for transport of passengers, Bangladeshi cargoes also need to ply between Dhaka and Chittagong for domestic consumption and for international export.
"They are topmost priority routes for Bangladesh-Indian bilateral route, and for Indian transit goods to move between Kolkata port and landlocked states of northeast India," the memoire added.
It said the project aims to increase the certainty of advertised water depth on given channels on the DCC (Dhaka-Chittagong Corridor) river route for IWT, reduce the number of accidents and safety incidents on inland waterways along the DCC, develop a framework to promote container movement for cargoes along the DCC, increase the reliability and availability of aids to navigations, river port terminals built with women-friendly facility and identify the obstacles to movement of containers.
Under the project, steps will be taken to improve inland waterway maintenance by addressing a few specific problem spots and through provision of visual aids to navigation for class-one routes between Dhaka-Chittagong IWT corridor, including branches to Ashuganj, Narayanganj and Barisal and the main river crossing routes.
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