Govt to build rail ICD in Ghorashal

The government is going to build another inland container depot (ICD) to facilitate the movement of rail-based containerised cargoes in the country, officials said.
The depot would be built in Ghorashal railway station area of Narsingdi district on Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain-Transfer (DBFOMT) mode where the private sector investor would share profit with the sate-owned Container Company of Bangladesh Ltd (CCBL).
The CCBL on Wednesday invited national bid for the construction of the multimodal ICD that would also facilitate movement of rail-based containerised cargoes to and from Bangladesh and neighbouring countries.
The ICD would be built on 20 acres of land owned by the Bangladesh Railway having an annual handling capacity of 100,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers.
After building it under the public private partnership (PPP) model, the private company would operate the ICD for a period of 25 years and then would hand over it to the CCBL with all moveable and immovable assets.
Rakibul Hasan Komol, company secretary, CCBL, told the FE that Ghorashal is an industrial zone and demand of transporting cargoes from there is growing.
The ICD would serve the nearest industrial units, he said, adding factories in Bhaluka of Mymensingh district and in Gazipur district would also be served through this ICD.
Mr Komol said the Dhaka ICD, located in the capital's Kamalapur area, would be closed down by next five years. Also, building an ICD in Dhirasram of Gazipur district would require four to five years.
"Business is growing every year and we've planned to build the ICD in Ghorashal to serve the nearest industrial units, which is expected to be operational by 2026," he said.
He said the Ghorashal ICD would be built with "modern facilities" and that is why it would have higher capacity to handle cargoes.
The CCBL had tendered for a 100,000 TEUs rail-based ICD in Halishahar area of Chattogram in February 2021 and had signed a deal with local terminal operator Saif Powertec Ltd in the same year for its construction under PPP model.
However, due to legal complications construction of the ICD remained suspended for several months.
Earlier, the CCBL had planned to build a small scale ICD on the western bank of the Jamuna River in Sirajganj district mainly to serve transportation of containerised cargoes from neighbouring India. However, the initiative is yet to see any tangible progress.
On the other hand, in September last year the Dhirasram ICD received nod from the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) after the Asian Development Bank (ADB) confirmed funding for its construction.
The 354,000 TEUs capacity ICD would be built on nearly 55 hectares of land and the construction is likely to begin this year.

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