The Hindu Business Line : Concor plans to promote global biz thru land route to Bangladesh

IN a bid to promote international business through the land route, Container Corporation of India (Concor) is examining if it can carve out for itself a share in the huge volume of trade that currently takes place by road between India and Bangladesh.

Concor has worked out tentatively a plan as to how to go about it and got in-principle approval of the authorities concerned in Delhi. However, much will depend on Bangladesh, which is believed to have been sounded about it but is yet to respond.

But then the delay on the part of Bangladesh to firm up decision is understandable. There is no such thing as inland container depot (ICD) on the route being favoured by Concor to run the proposed service. Also, the level of handling facilities there leaves much to be desired. To enable Concor to run the service, Bangladesh, it is therefore felt, will be required to develop certain facilities in that territory. According to the tentative plan, Concor will use the Gede-Darshana corridor through West Bengal for the proposed service and initially might choose to run one container train every week. The frequency can be stepped up depending on the cargo inducement. There is no dearth of cargo as an estimated $1 billion worth of trade by road takes between the two countries, the flow being largely from India to Bangladesh.

To facilitate the service, Concor will be in a position to link its various ICDs located all over India. "We want to do the trial run at the earliest and once we get the clearance of the authorities concerned in both the countries, it should be possible to operate regular service within less than a month," according to Concor sources.

Right now, substantial quantities of cargo, mostly bulk items, move by train from India to Bangladesh. Concor is not targeting that trade which in any case is handled by the Railways. "We are targeting the large volumes of break-bulk trade which is amenable to containerisation," said the sources.

However, as it was pointed out, the flow of traffic will be largely uni-directional, i.e, from India to Bangladesh, as it is now the case with Concor's service with Nepal.

Right now, Concor runs two trains a week between Kolkata and Raxaul, the last Indian railway station near the India-Nepal border. Once the Nepalese authorities have finalised the appointment of terminal handling contractor for the Birgunge ICD located in Nepal, it should be possible for Concor to run trains directly from Kolkata to Birgunge where an ICD has been set up by the Nepalese authorities with assistance from the World Bank to facilitate cargo movement to and from Kolkata port.

Nepal, being a landlocked country, uses Kolkata port for routing its exports and imports, in fact more imports than exports. Concor, among others, has also bid for the tender floated by the Nepalese authorities for the appointment of terminal handling contractor.

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Concor plans to promote global biz thru land route to Bangladesh