Bangladesh Railway authorities are analysing its container, freight and cargo transportation facilities for taking future plans.
Under a technical assistance project, the initiative was taken to improve the Bangladesh Railway鈥檚 overall operational capacity of freight and cargo transports and safe operation.
Asian Development Bank is funding the project titled 鈥楾he Technical Assistance for Facilitation of Rail Transport for Container Freight Cargo鈥�.
Though the project work started on April 6, 2023 and it scheduled to be concluded by June 30, 2025, currently it is in initial stage.
According to the Bangladesh Railway, the project cost is Tk聽7.49 crore, including the project assistance of Tk聽7.32 crore and the government fund of Tk 17.1 lakh.
The project鈥檚 technical assistance project proposal was approved on January 1, 2023.
The project was taken with an aim to form a framework for a plan for national Inland Container Depot development, action plan for increasing container transport and administrative issues for establishing ICDs to increase the Bangladesh Railway鈥檚 container, freight and cargo transportation capacity.
The technical assistance project is scheduled to work for taking pre-preparatory activities like 鈥� conduct study on the construction of Dhirasram ICD and form CCBL business plan.
Following this, on the basis of the pre-preparatory activities, future projects will be taken to establish ICDs at different parts of Bangladesh and take different investment projects for the railway.
Regarding the project, a project implementation committee held a meeting at the Rail Bhaban in the capital on Tuesday, said a railway official.
Till then, as per the approved TAPP, the consultants are working for preparing the Inception Report (draft), he added.
Bangladesh Railway carried 373 crore passengers and 0.5445 crore tonnes of goods in 2020-2021 fiscal, 637 crore passengers and 0.3177 crore tonnes of goods in 2019-20 fiscal and 927 crore passengers and 0.3960 crore tonnes of goods in 2018-19 fiscal.
Railway is also burdened with a large number of old locomotives, carriages, wagons and relief cranes still running despite their economic lives expired.
Railway officials said that the standard economic life of a freight wagon is 40 years.
The railway now has a total of 3,095 freight wagons of which 2,142 are for meter gauge and 953 are for broad gauge tracks.
A total of 887 or 28 per cent wagons are running with their economic life still on, while 2,208 or 72 per cent are running beyond their economic lives.
Observers said that the freight and cargo transport services of railway is poorer than its passenger services.