The Bangladesh Bridge Authority has planned to lease out a luxury guest house to international hotel management companies in a desperate bid to reduce the loss incurred from the operation of the newly built tunnel under the River Karnaphuli in Chattogram.
鈥榃e will call international tenders soon to implement the government decision of leasing out the guest house,鈥� said bridge authority executive director Fahimul Islam while talking to 抖阴精品 on Monday.
International hotel management companies will get priority in the bidding, he said.
The immediate past Awami League regime, ousted on August 5 amid a student-led mass uprising, began the construction of the over 90-kliometre tunnel under the Karnaphuli Tunnel Project with an initial cost of around Tk 8,446 crore.
Implemented with a Chinese loan, the project鈥檚 cost eventually soared to Tk 10,686 crore due to the addition of new components in the project area covering some 72 acres.
The sprawling guest house, featuring a 5,000-square-foot bungalow with six rooms, a swimming pool, modern furnishings, 10 single cottages, four duplex cottages, a three-storey multipurpose building, a lake, and a children playground, was included in the project in 2019 with an estimated cost of Tk 450 crore.
It was reported that Awami League general secretary and former road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader forced the bridge authority to incorporate the component without any feasibility study to appease then prime minister Sheikh Hasina who fled to India on August 5.
Around 80 per cent of the luxury guest house resembling top-rated hotels has already been completed.
The commissioning of the guest house cannot be made in absence of manpower, according to the bridge authority officials.
In 2023, the bridge authority opened the tunnel for vehicular movement only to find that the average monthly toll collection was a meagre Tk 2.5 crore against the operational cost of Tk 11.5 crore.
Ministry of聽Road Transport聽and Bridgees adviser Fouzul Kabir Khan in a recent review meeting with the bridge authority expressed concern over losses brought by the tunnel鈥檚 operation.
He also feared that the luxury guest house would end up becoming a skeleton-like-infrastructure without any operation.
Dismissing the option of running the guest house under the revenue budget, the adviser asked the bridge authority to take measures to the lease out the guest house to private sector to reduce the losses incurred by the tunnel鈥檚 operation, said the bridge authority officials.
Although the past Awami regime always highlighted the infrastructure鈥檚 uniqueness being the first such tunnel underneath any rivers in South Asia, the loss incurred at the operational phase was exposed in media reports during its rule, said economists.
The government is repaying the Chinese loan on the tunnel through the nose, said former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain.
Bridge authority executive director said that they preferred international hotel management companies for operating the guest house the way two other luxury hotels owned by the government in the capital are managed.
The state-owned Pan Pacific Sonargaon, located at Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, is operated by Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts, and the other nearby hotel located at Minto Road is operated by the InterContinental Hotels Group.
The Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts of Singapore will operate the management of the Pan Pacific Sonargaon until 2032 under an agreement that will enable the company to earn 1.3 per cent on annual sales and 9.5 per cent on marketing.
The rest of the income is earned by the Hotels International Limited, a state-owned subsidiary.
Bridge authority executive director also said that they were considering the local private hotel management as the second priority option to lease out the much talked-about guest house.
Despite criticism from the economists, the Awami regime took the controversial tunnel project to facilitate easy road transportation between main land Chattogram and Anowara upazila.
The Awami government also provided land to Chinese investors to build an economic zone in Anowara, although the progress of the zone is insignificant.
The planning ministry, as per directives from its adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud, is identifying unnecessary and politically-motivated development projects taken by the immediate past government amid a spree of costly overseas loans taking the government鈥檚 outstanding debt to $79.69 billion by March 2024 from mere $25 billion in 2009.
The planning adviser has already stated that the unnecessary and politically-motivated projects would be dropped from the Annual Development Programme to offset the wastage of the public fund, a top priority of the current government to tackle the economic headwinds blowing since 2022.
