Building the Dhaka-Chittagong expressway
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Amirul Islam
Competitiveness has always been the key to business operations and this competitiveness for Bangladesh, especially in the sphere of its cargoes related to its export trade, has come to mean largely the speed and efficiency with which cargoes can be delivered from its principal outlet to the world, the Chittagong port. The functioning of this port was reported to have much improved during the last four months under the caretaker government.
The government gave focused its attention to improving the operations of this port in all respects and engaged the joint security forces for the purpose. The results have been very impressive. The time of handling cargoes was brought down from 12 days to only 3 days, the earlier congestion has completely disappeared and foreign shipping companies have started taking lower charges to touch Chittagong port after knowing about its improvements and the reduced risks of calling on it. This attitude on the part of the shipping companies is helping to save resources for businessest had to be wasted when the port was very inefficient.
There are more things to be done to build on this very positive trend. A suggestion has come from businesses that along with further improvement in the port's functioning and adding to its capacities, government should adopt a plan with no loss of time to build at least one expressway in the strategic business corridor between Dhaka and Chittagong. This proposal merits a favourable response immediately. The plan on its implementation can lead to saving of some 50,000 million taka annually for businesses from substantial reduction of transportation costs on the corridor.
The reduction of this cost is only one aspect of the benefits from this project. The competitiveness of the export-oriented industries, especially of garments, would increase significantly after it is built. The expressway would help mightily in shortening the crucial lead time for garments exporters in both carrying imported raw materials to production destinations swiftly and similarly cut down on the time to reach finished products at the port for loading on ships. Not only costs would fall for industries geared to exports, transportation costs of all types of consumer and essential goods from Chittagong would likely fall significantly from their faster dispatch and hence reduced transportation costs.
There are now two proposals on building this expressway. One is to use the already available but unused requisitioned land adjacent to the present Dhaka-Chittagong highway to build it. The other is to requisition fresh lands and to build the expressway at a distance. It seems that in terms of time and costs the first proposal to build it on ready land near the Dhaka-Chittagong highway should be adopted. To do this will mean averting the long delays likely in acquiring new lands, facing litigation problems and meeting compensation requirements. No such hassles are to be faced in going for the first proposal. But the four-lane expressway will cut down the time of movement between Dhaka and Chittagong for business cargoes by nearly four hours. It takes on an average at least seven hours now for a container-laden truck to reach Chittagong from Dhaka using the existing Dhaka-Chittagong highway. The expressway would be an exclusive one for high speedy travel by vehicles carrying only business cargoes.
Apart from this expressway government should also give attention simultaneously to building inland container depots (ICDs) to be supportive of both the port and the expressway. Undoubtedly, the ICDs would take pressure away from the Chittagong port and also ease the movement of traffic on the vital Dhaka-Chittagong corridor.
Competitiveness has always been the key to business operations and this competitiveness for Bangladesh, especially in the sphere of its cargoes related to its export trade, has come to mean largely the speed and efficiency with which cargoes can be delivered from its principal outlet to the world, the Chittagong port. The functioning of this port was reported to have much improved during the last four months under the caretaker government.
The government gave focused its attention to improving the operations of this port in all respects and engaged the joint security forces for the purpose. The results have been very impressive. The time of handling cargoes was brought down from 12 days to only 3 days, the earlier congestion has completely disappeared and foreign shipping companies have started taking lower charges to touch Chittagong port after knowing about its improvements and the reduced risks of calling on it. This attitude on the part of the shipping companies is helping to save resources for businessest had to be wasted when the port was very inefficient.
There are more things to be done to build on this very positive trend. A suggestion has come from businesses that along with further improvement in the port's functioning and adding to its capacities, government should adopt a plan with no loss of time to build at least one expressway in the strategic business corridor between Dhaka and Chittagong. This proposal merits a favourable response immediately. The plan on its implementation can lead to saving of some 50,000 million taka annually for businesses from substantial reduction of transportation costs on the corridor.
The reduction of this cost is only one aspect of the benefits from this project. The competitiveness of the export-oriented industries, especially of garments, would increase significantly after it is built. The expressway would help mightily in shortening the crucial lead time for garments exporters in both carrying imported raw materials to production destinations swiftly and similarly cut down on the time to reach finished products at the port for loading on ships. Not only costs would fall for industries geared to exports, transportation costs of all types of consumer and essential goods from Chittagong would likely fall significantly from their faster dispatch and hence reduced transportation costs.
There are now two proposals on building this expressway. One is to use the already available but unused requisitioned land adjacent to the present Dhaka-Chittagong highway to build it. The other is to requisition fresh lands and to build the expressway at a distance. It seems that in terms of time and costs the first proposal to build it on ready land near the Dhaka-Chittagong highway should be adopted. To do this will mean averting the long delays likely in acquiring new lands, facing litigation problems and meeting compensation requirements. No such hassles are to be faced in going for the first proposal. But the four-lane expressway will cut down the time of movement between Dhaka and Chittagong for business cargoes by nearly four hours. It takes on an average at least seven hours now for a container-laden truck to reach Chittagong from Dhaka using the existing Dhaka-Chittagong highway. The expressway would be an exclusive one for high speedy travel by vehicles carrying only business cargoes.
Apart from this expressway government should also give attention simultaneously to building inland container depots (ICDs) to be supportive of both the port and the expressway. Undoubtedly, the ICDs would take pressure away from the Chittagong port and also ease the movement of traffic on the vital Dhaka-Chittagong corridor.