Transport planning for competitiveness

Remaining successful in business or winning more market shares, essentially involves reducing the costs of doing business. The economy of a country should aim to become more and more competitive to flourish internally and especially to promote its external trade. Bangladesh has many things to do for making its economy more and more competitive. Among them, a main requirement would be much improving, expanding and upgrading its transportation infrastructures and addressing the related problems. According to a report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Bangladesh economy can gain from 1.0 per cent rise in its total economic output and foreign trade by 20 per cent if the different modes of transportation only in the Dhaka-Chittagong corridor are made more efficient.

The study also significantly revealed that the overall informal payments and other inefficiencies add up to 40 per cent to transport related costs for imports in the country. Thus, the case for streamlining the transportation mediums in this corridor, should be obvious. Not only in this particular corridor, similar transportation related improvements and efficiencies need to be achieved throughout the country. The same will call for significantly adding to the number of transportation related infrastructures, their maintenance and various supportive functions including also the elimination of the tolls and other manmade abuses.

Indeed, transportation is counted as a major cost of business. The countries that have developed or are noted for moving up along the economic ladder, owe a lot to successful transport planning. Transport planning can involve many things from building shortest road, rail or waterway systems for the dispatch of cargoes to identifying and promoting the cheapest medium of transports and integrating them to the needs of various users. For example, waterways may be relatively cheaper for the haulage of cargoes of the readymade garments (RMG) sector in Bangladesh. But speed of delivery requires their transportation through land routes whereas other importers or producers not bothered by the need for fast freighting can opt for the cheaper waterway. Thus, different categories of users can use different mediums of transport suitable to them but each of these mediums need to discharge their utility efficiently for the optimum benefits of businesses. Thus, the challenge is adding to capacities of the different transportation mediums and making them function with utmost efficiency.

The functioning of the Chittagong port was reported to have much improved during the last one year. The government gave focused 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 eight days to only three days. The latest news is that the time to unload cargoes and to leave the port has been reduced to a little over one day. The earlier congestion has completely disappeared and foreign shipping companies have started taking lower charges while coming to Chittagong port after knowing about its improvements and the reduced risks of calling at it. This attitude on the part of the shipping companies is helping in the saving resources for businesses that 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. The plan on its implementation can lead to saving of some 50 billion 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 notably from their faster dispatch and hence reduced transportation costs.

The projected four-lane expressway will cut down the time of movement between Dhaka and Chittagong for business cargoes by nearly four hours. It takes an average of 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 speed 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. Similarly, railway's transportation capacities in this corridor can be increased and improved by double-tracking the existing single line and improving railway management. The waterways --with ICDs of their own-- need to be similarly developed.

All of these measures will need to be taken in line with projections of present and potential uses of the transportation mediums. That is why, it is absolutely necessary that the work should proceed under a comprehensive or master plan with components in it that can be progressively realised in tandem with the needs of the users. It is also imperative to make progress on different proposed projects to develop Bangladesh as a regional hub of transportation.