Dhaka wants to see Mongla Port as South Asian hub

SAARC ministers discuss Lahore-Ctg road link
South Asian nations agreed to study Dhaka’s proposal for making Mongla Port a regional hub to serve landlocked Nepal and Bhutan, and build a greater connectivity within the region.
SAARC transport ministers at their second meeting in Colombo on July 25 also agreed to form expert group for inking a regional transit agreement especially focusing priority road and rail projects.
The expert group would work simultaneously on motor vehicle and rail links— the two proposals earlier agreed by the member states.
A foreign ministry official told New Age on Monday that Dhaka had proposed in the meeting that Bangladesh’s south-western port Mongla could be turned into a South Asian hub for boosting the region’s trade and connectivity. The proposal is consistent with the recommendations of SAARC Regional Multimodal Transport Study (SRMTS) of the Asian Development Bank.
The official said that the meeting in Sri Lankan capital on Friday welcomed Bangladesh’s proposal and decided to put their suggestions after studying it.
‘Once Mongla is made as a regional port hub, we will be connected with both Nepal and Bhutan,’ said the official.
The Colombo meeting reviewed the progress in implementation of decisions of the first meeting of SAARC transport ministers held in August 2007 in New Delhi.
Dwelling on the India’s earlier two projects on road and railway corridors, the foreign ministry official said that New Delhi informed the meeting that they had done their survey on their part for the proposed railway route of Agartala-Akhaura-Chittagong but Dhaka said that it had not yet studied it.
Bangladesh will need to upgrade its eastern railway to broad gauge for Akhaura-Agartala rail link proposed by India.
Regional transport ministers finally agreed that the proposals for Lahore-Delhi-Kolkata-Benapole-Petrapole-Chittagong road link and Agartala-Akhaura-Chittagong rail link needed further studies.
The official said India floated an idea of running a demonstration train between Pakistan and Bangladesh through territories of India and Nepal.
The meeting decided to finalise their proposal of declaring 2010-2020 as ‘decade of intra-regional connectivity in SAARC’.
The SRMTS earlier suggested initiation of three types of projects — national, bilateral and regional — for developing regional transport modalities.
The Manila-based lending agency’s proposal initially covers road transport and it is supposed to be expanded in the next stages encompassing railway, inland water and maritime.

Courtesy of NewAgebd