Bangladesh has given India access to Chattogram and Mongla ports for transit and trans-shipment of cargo, a move expected to significantly cut the time and cost needed to transport goods to the country’s northeastern states.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue (NBR) released a "permanent transit order" stating that the trans-shipment of goods will be carried out in accordance with the standard operating procedures that the two nations had completed as part of a 2018 agreement.

Chattogram is Bangladesh’s main port and handles more than 90% of the country’s foreign trade. Mongla is the country’s second largest sea port on the Bay of Bengal.

In recent years, India and Bangladesh have taken a number of actions to improve connectivity, such as reopening several cross-border railway links that had been shut since the 1965 war with Pakistan, connecting riverine waterway systems, and using Bangladeshi ports for the trans-shipment of goods to India's strategically important northeastern region.

The two sides signed the “Agreement on the Use of Chattogram and Mongla Ports for Movement of Goods to and from India” in October 2018 and finalized the standard operating procedures for operationalizing the pact a year later. But the trans-shipment of goods had not started as Bangladesh had to finalize certain customs procedures and put in place necessary logistics, people familiar with the matter said.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the initiative suffered a setback. The Covid-19 issue, however, also demonstrated the value of cross-border connection, with the Indian side utilizing cross-border train services to deliver necessities to Bangladesh.

The two parties tested the use of Chattogram and Mongla ports for the trans-shipment of cargo to the northeastern states extensively over the past year. The first trial trans-shipping of products took place in July 2020 when a load of iron rods and pulses was transported from Haldia port near Kolkata to Chattogram port in southeast Bangladesh and then shipped across the land to Tripura.

The order issued by the Bangladeshi side opens up transit on 16 routes, and cargo can be transported from Chattogram or Mongla port to Agartala in Tripura via Akhaura, Dawki in Meghalaya via Tamabil, Sutarkandi in Assam via Sheola, and Srimantapur in West Bengal via Bibir Bazar. The same routes can be used to transport commodities from the northeastern states to the two ports in Bangladesh.

Indian operators will have to obtain a five-year licence from Bangladesh customs, and goods being trans-shipped cannot be kept at ports in Bangladesh for more than a week. Any goods prohibited by the laws of Bangladesh cannot transit through the country, according to the order.

Transporters will be required to pay a number of fees, including a 30 Taka per tonne transshipment tax, a 100 Taka per tonne security fee, a 100 Taka per tonne administration fee, and tolls for accessing Bangladeshi highways.

Image source: ANI