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Bangladesh Railway (BR) has decided to construct Dhirasram Inland Container Depot (ICD) with government funds, dropping the idea to build it under public-private partnership (PPP) arrangements.
BR took the decision as it did not find any suitable private investor, sources said.
The Dhirasram ICD project taken up by BR to shift ICD from Kamalapur, Dhaka was among its three projects selected by Japanese companies for investment under PPP arrangements during the 3rd Bangladesh-Japan joint platform meeting held in March 2019.
But the proposal put forward by Sojitz Corporation which was selected by Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) was not acceptable to BR.
Sources said BR had tried to get proposal from another Japanese investor after informing MLIT but could not get anyone to date.
"Japan took time until December last to find another investor but finally could not," said an official involved with the PPP projects.
Afterward, the Ministry of Railway (MoR) in a meeting took decision to construct the new ICD with government funds and prepared a development project proposal (DPP) to complete land acquisition at Dhirasram and Purbachal.
The implementing agency would need to acquire some 222 acres of land for setting up Dhirasram ICD, officials said, adding that the cost of land acquisition was estimated at Tk 34.75 billion after recast recently by the evaluation committee.
Under the land acquisition project, BR officials said, a rail track development scheme from Purbachal to the ICD site was also taken to set up track between ICD and existing track.
Sources said BR needs to shift ICD from Dhaka to Dhirasram immediately as it has made good progress in setting up Multimodal Transport Hub (MMTH) on the site of ICD at Kamalapur under PPP arrangements.
MMTH is also one of the three BR projects selected by MLIT for Japanese private sector investment. Another project is MMTH at airport.
They said railway track from Padma Bridge will also be linked with Kamalapur railway station using ICD land in Dhaka.