Multimodal Container Depot Emphasizing Railways to be Developed in Chattogram
19 October 2021
A multimodal container depot will be constructed in Chattogram City, which will enhance the port's capacity to handle imports and goods bound for export. Saif Logistics Alliance Ltd. will invest around Tk 300 crore (around $35 million) to develop the facility on a design-build-finance-operate-maintain -transfer basis. The company signed a contract with the Container Company of Bangladesh Ltd (CCBL) on 19 October.
The depot is envisaged to have an annual handling capacity of three lakh (300,000) TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers. It will be able to accommodate around 8,500 containers at a time.
The new terminal will have provisions for rail and road transport, emphasizing rail communication, shared Mr. Tarafder Md Ruhul Amin, Chairman of Saif Logistics, to the Daily Star.
Mr. Nurul Islam Sujan, Railways Minister of the Government of Bangladesh, urged the Saif Group and others to give priority to railways to transport containers.
Private inland container depots (ICDs) in and around Chattogram only offer road connectivity, according to the report by the Daily Star. These 19 private ICDs handle around 1.3 lakh (130,000) TEU containers every month. Lack of rail capacity hinder Bangladesh traders from utilizing the country’s railway network to their advantage.
CCBL was formed by Bangladesh Railways to efficiently run container trains and manage loading and unloading of containers. Saif Logistics Alliance is a special purpose company of Saif Power Group which operates two terminals in the Chattogram Port – Chattogram Container Terminal and New Mooring Container Terminal.
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