British company to build Tk 60 thousand crore Dhaka-Payra rail line project
British company DP Rail will design, finance, build, operate and maintain the planned 240-kilometer Dhaka-Payra rail line.
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Bangladesh Railway (BR) and DP Rail on Tuesday at the Ministry of Railways in the capital.
Railways Minister Md Mujibul Haque, UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy for Bangladesh Rushanara Ali, British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Alison Blake and Chief Executive of DP Rail Ian Derbyshire witnessed the signing.
The British firm will invest in the new railways around Taka 60 thousand crore, which will be the biggest ever Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for Bangladesh.
“The rail line, biggest ever project in the country’s railway sector, will play an important role in generating more revenue by facilitating transportation of goods to and from the deep-sea port,” Mujibul Haque told the event.
Besides, he said, it would for the first time link the Barisal divisional headquarters with rest of the country.
The new railway forms a vital part of the Payra Port project, which is designed to provide a new deep water port at the top end of the Bay of Bengal, capable of handling large container ships of 8,000 containers capacity or 120,000 tonnes of cargo.
DP Rail expects the freight train service to start, prospectively, in 2024 and, in the first full year of operation is projected to handle approximately 2 million TEU with frequent daily trains running at 100 kilometer per hour, and with volumes rising to almost 4 million TEU per year by 2030. Container trains will be around 1km in length. Additional trains will convey coal and other bulk products.
For the country’s readymade garment sector, the railway will be the high capacity trading route to the sea and its customers around the world.
