DHAKA, Sept 3 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Bangladesh’s largest river bridge is expected to bolster the country’s economy through a landmark connection between capital Dhaka and the country’s southern region, Anadolu Agency reported.
Construction of the Padma bridge — a multipurpose road-rail bridge across the Padma River — is expected to be complete by end-2020 and open for plying by mid-2021.
“Our overall progress in construction is 82 per cent and currently we are working very smoothly. If nothing unpredictable happens, we must be able to complete it by December 2020”, M Shafiqul Islam, director of the bridge project told Anadolu Agency.
This is the largest project in the country’s communication sector in terms of size and expenditure, he added, “And we do not expect another mega project (ike this one) in the near future.”
“We hope to complete the construction timely as long as the flow of fund, technical progress, condition of river and external environment — all are normal”, Islam said.
The much-hyped bridge project is marked to be challenging for incumbent Awami League government since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina assuming power in 2009 as the deadlines of the project have shifted several times due to uncertainty.
The government declared it as a top priority project initially with a 2013-deadline to complete.
But the 6.15-kilometer-long (3.8 miles) billion-dollar project turned into an uncertainty as the World Bank withdrew its promised US$1.2 billion loan on allegation of corruption, resulting in then the Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain Hossain to quit in 2012.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, however, brushed aside the corruption charge and declared a challenge to construct the bridge with internal resources.
Government manages a loan of 298.94 billion Bangladeshi taka (around $3.5 billion) from internal sources for the project with condition to repay within 35 years at one per cent interest.
The strategic bridge was also marked as one of the core campaigning issues of the South Asian country’s national polls in 2014 and 2018.
— BERNAMA
