Finance minister AMA Muhith, in his budgetary speech, has not said anything about implementation of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge (PMB) project.
He, however, said: “I’m confident that we’ll be able to start construction of the main bridge, as well as river training-related work pertaining to the project during the tenure of the present government.” He described the PMB project as one of the prioritised development initiatives taken by the government.
About the World Bank’s (WB’s) cancellation of funds for the project, Muhith said: “Earlier, I had mentioned that our project implementation schedule did not match the WB’s requirements.”
He also said that the government has used domestic funds to start preliminary work to avoid any delay to implement the project. “I presume that the WB or the Canadian authorities will take a long time to settle the allegations brought against this deal. We cannot wait for an indefinite period. We expect that the ACC will be able to unravel the mystery soon. In the meantime, work on Janjira Approach Road and river training has begun,” Muhith noted.
The work on establishing service areas at Mawa and Janjira has begun and the purchase proposal for Mawa Approach Road will be approved soon, said the finance minister.
“Let me add that there are only a few firms in the world which can handle the work of a large construction project like building a 6.15 km-long over the Padma river. Therefore, we’re only inviting proposals from pre-qualified contractors,” he added.
About the present status of foreign funds for the project, he said: “We’ll be using an Indian grant of USD 200 million for this project. Hopefully, we’ll be able to mobilise funding from the Islamic Development Bank and a few other development partners. We had no other alternative but to begin implementation of this project with our own funding arrangements.”
Apart from the question of expediency, it is important to ensure international competitive bidding for implementation of such a complex project from the engineering point of view, he noted.
On May 28, the National Economic Council (NEC) allocated Tk. 6,852 crore for the Padma Multipurpose Bridge (PMB) project for the new fiscal year. It also approved the Tk. 73,984-crore Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the 2013-14 fiscal year.
On May 23, communications minister Obaidul Quader said tenders for construction of the 6.15 km-long bridge would be floated in the last week of June. “The project proposal for the construction of the bridge will be ready by mid-June and the tenders will be invited in the last week of the month.” he added.
The AL-led Grand Alliance government is determined to start the construction work within its tenure, even with its own resources, after it formally withdrew its request to the World Bank to fund the country’s biggest-ever infrastructure development project. On April 9, the finance minister had said that the government would invite global tenders within June for construction of the bridge.
-With The Independent input
