Over 4,000 MT of rice offloaded in three days

About 4,440 tonnes of rice have been offloaded from the Hili Land Port in Dinajpur in the last three days after the government had reduced the duty imposed on rice imports.

Sohrab Hossain Mollik, Public Relations Officer of Panama Port, confirmed the matter.

He said the import of rice through Hili port started on July 23 after the import ban ended. Initially, the importers had offloaded the rice regularly but stopped after dollar prices increased in the market.

Over 300 Indian trucks loaded with rice were stranded at the port waiting to be unloaded till August 29.

The government reduced the import duty on rice to 5 per cent on Sunday. But due to paperwork complications, the importers started unloading the trucks on Tuesday.

In the last three days, 4,440 tonnes of rice had been unloaded from 111 trucks. Among them, 1,200 tonnes of rice from 30 trucks on Tuesday, 2,040 tonnes from 51 trucks on Wednesday and 1,200 tonnes from 30 trucks till 4 pm on Thursday were unloaded