FE Report

The government has taken a move to improve the country's rail and water transport facilities to ease pressure on road communications, officials said Monday.

The planning ministry will place an analytical report on "total investment so far and rate of returns for developing road, railway and waterways communications" before the government's highest development project related author ity today (Tuesday).

The highest public body -- Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) -- will review the report aiming at working out further steps to improve the country's traditional rail and marine communications.

The prime minister in early February asked the planning ministry to prepare the report and place it before the ECNEC for discussion.

The road system in the country accounts for nearly 88 per cent of the total traffic while the railway and waterways four and eight per cent respectively, official data showed.

Planning ministry said in 1975 the cheaper railway and inland waterways transported 30 per cent and 16 per cent passengers respectively against 54 per cent through roads.

"Though the railway and waterways are much cheaper in transporting both passengers and goods, the high investment road communications have been made almost lone traffic route," a planning ministry official said.

Per-head fare for the road transport is Tk 0.85 to Tk1.0 a kilometre and Tk4.34 to Tk4.55 for per tonne of goods. On the other hand, a passenger needs to spend only Tk0.35 for railway and Tk0.85 per kilometre for river transports.

The fare for transporting goods by railway system is only Tk1.21 to Tk2.07 per tonne and Tk 0.60 to Tk0.99 through waterway.

The planning ministry report, to be placed before the ECNEC Tuesday, said the country requires Tk27.0 million to construct a kilometer of road, Tk17.6 million for its maintenance and Tk0.05 million for regular maintenance works. Usually a road's life cycle is 20 years.

On the other hand, construction of one kilometre railway needs Tk50 million with ensuring 100 years of sustainability.

Besides, the waterways need Tk145 for dredging one kilometre route.

Bangladesh has one of the largest inland waterway networks in the world with nearly 23,100 kilometres of waterways, of which only 5,968km remain operative in the rainy season and 3,814km in the dry season.

The development of silt on the river-bed, impact of the climate change and degradation of environment are the major reasons for damaging the traditional waterways.

Meanwhile, 2853km railway tracks in 1970 have decreased to 2657km in 2006 as only 139 kilometres of new tracks have been added in the post-liberation period of the country.

The planning ministry said the capacity of country's most of the roads and bridges will diminish within the next 20 years because of increasing pressure of transports.

The previous governments have invested so much money on road communications development that other two traditional transport systems have got less allocation for their development, he said.

In the first five-year plan (1973-78), the road sector got only 28 per cent of total Tk 5.27 billion allocated for the transport sector development. It rose to 79 per cent in 2002-2003 period out of total Tk 26.81 billion investment in the entire transport sector.

The total road under roads and highways department has so far stood at 20,888km and under the local government engineering department it is 250,153km across the country.