Bangla Gov to get fund Padma bridge

Dhaka: The government is planning to take loans from commercial private banks to fund part of the construction of the proposed Padma Bridge on its own resources.

The government needs to pay about $480 million, a third of the project cost estimated at $1.6 billion, and it is looking for various options to mobilise the fund for the bridge construction.
Three multilateral lending agencies — the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Japan Bank for International Cooperation — have made commitment to lend $300 million each, or $900 million in total, for the project.

‘We are mulling over taking more than Tk 100 crore each year in loan from banks during the five-year construction period,’ said an official of the Bangladesh Bridge Authority, the implementing agency of the construction of the Padma multipurpose bridge.

The construction work of the 5.6km bridge connecting Mawa to Jajira is scheduled to begin in the 2009-10 financial year. The bridge, with a 25m wide, four-lane roadway and a railway, will take five years to be completed.

Officials said apart from taking bank loans, the government also planned to allocate Tk 300 crore in each financial year in its annual development programme and launch a Tk 500 crore securitisation of the Jamuna Bridge to fund the construction.
The officials said the government was weighing a number of other options which include imposing levy and surcharges and dropping unnecessary and less important development projects to mobilise funds for the bridge construction.

‘We are working on every possible option to fund the project, considering it to be of national importance,’ an official said.

Once the bridge is commissioned, it will significantly reduce the transport time between the divisions and cities on the opposite sides of the river.

The feasibility study of the bridge carried out in 2004 by the Japan International Cooperation Agency projected that the volume of traffic passing through it would be 21,300 vehicles a day immediately after its opening and would reach 41,600 vehicles a day by 2025.