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The Ministry of Shipping has sought additional allocation of Tk 302.21 for the construction of Ashuganj Inland Container Terminal extending the time to complete the project by three more years after the passage of two years and a half since the project began.
The ministry has sent a revised project proposal titled ‘Establishment of Inland Container River Port at Ashuganj’ to the Planning Commission seeking additional amount and extension of time, a senior official of the Planning Ministry told The Business Post on Wednesday.
According to the revised proposal, the cost of the project is now estimated at Tk 1,595 crore which will be complete by December 2024.
As per the previous estimation, the cost of the project was at Tk 1,293 crore of which Tk 862 crore was supposed to come from the government exchequer while the rest Tk 431 crore from the Indian Line of Credit II.
According to the revised DPP, the government will give an additional Tk 91.94 crore while the Indian government will give an additional Tk 210.57 crore to the project to be implemented by the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA).
The executive committee of the National Economic Council had approved the project in 2018 aiming to boost the trade activities with the neighbouring countries. The project was scheduled to be implemented between July 2018 and December 2021.
“The project was supposed to be completed in this December. But now the shipping ministry has proposed to increase cost over Tk 300 crore and sought three more years for implementing the project,” said Mamun Al Rashid, member (Physical Infrastructure Division) of the Planning Commission.
“At a project evaluation committee meeting recently and we have called for sector-wise details in the revised project proposal,” he said.
“The shipping ministry says that the project has been amended due to change in the design and increase of cost in different sectors,” he said, adding that the commission has sought an explanation about increasing the cost of the project.
The project aims to facilitate transportation of goods containers through the river route as well as transportation of containers from the Chattogram, Mongla and other ports.
According to the DPP, Ashuganj was declared as a river port in 2004. Ashuganj river port has been classified as a ‘Port of Call’ in line with the Inland Water Transport and Trade Protocol between Bangladesh and India.
‘Port of Call’ provides the facility of loading and unloading of goods of the river vessels of both the countries. It will be possible to transport around four lakh Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of containers on this route every year as per the survey.
The main components of the project are 12.8 hectares of land acquisition, procurement of cargo handling equipment, construction of infrastructures, port work, cargo terminal infrastructures and consultancy services for the design and supervision works.
