Initiating the National Logistics Strategy, reducing dwell times at the Chattogram port and decongesting the national highway could raise Bangladesh’s overall export by 19 per cent, said Tatiana Peralta Quiros, senior transport specialist, the World Bank Group. Logistics costs raise production and business cooperation costs by 4.5-48 per cent, she said.
She was addressing the Logistics Infrastructure Development Working Committee meeting, jointly organised last week by Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) and the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Office.
BUILD chief executive officer Ferdaus Ara Begum said formulation and implementation of the National Integrated Logistics Policy could help attract investment and increase export competitiveness to realise the targets of the Eighth Five Year Plan and Perspective Plan 2041.
Initiating the National Logistics Strategy, reducing dwell times at the Chattogram port and decongesting the national highway could raise Bangladesh’s overall export by 19 per cent, said Tatiana Peralta Quiros, senior transport specialist, the World Bank Group. Logistics costs raise production and business cooperation costs by 4.5-48 per cent, she said.
She said BUILD and the ministry of industries are jointly working to include logistics as a high priority sector and declare investment incentives for logistics and its sub-sectors in a separate chapter of the upcoming National Industrial Policy 2021, according to a BUILD press release.
Rizwan Rahman, president of the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said logistics should be included in the industrial policy as a sector. He said privatisation of airports, seaports, railroads is the demand of time and decentralisation of industrialisation should be incentivised to attract investment.
Special Procurement Act should be considered to prepare logistics policy, Rahman added.
Mahbubul Alam, president of Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said there is no policy on the in-out time of container trucks in Chattogram. The establishment of a central truck terminal may reduce the congestion stemming from this, he felt. Water connectivity may reduce over-dependency on the roads, he added.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
