Country’s first private-sector special economic zone (SEZ) and a container terminal being built in Narsingdi faced a setback for lack of a road network with the industrial hub, officials said Wednesday. An unusual delay by the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) in constructing a 12.55-kilometre road stands in the way of setting up the economic zone and attracting local and foreign investments, they added. AK Khan and Company Ltd, a local industrial conglomerate, has bagged licence to set up the economic zone and river container terminal on 205 acres of land in Palash of Narsingdi district, close by the capital, Dhaka. “The delay in road construction has pushed us back from making it a very vibrant economic zone for the local and foreign investors. Once some local and foreign investors were ready to invest here, but they were now showing reluctance due to the present road-difficulties,” Shahadat Hossain, a director of the company, told the FE. He said investment here now mainly depends on the construction of the proposed Panchdona-Danga-Ghorashal road. The road will connect the proposed AK Khan Container Terminal and SEZ with the capital and the rest of the country. Sources said the RHD had first taken up the road-construction project at Tk 1.09 billion in November 2013. But the state-run road developer recently recast the project, raising the cost to Tk 4.52 billion after a nearly two-year pause. Officials said when the RHD took up the road project in November 2013, AK Khan offered Tk 404.4 million in grants for the cost of land acquisition. But the RHD did not build the road that time and made a delay by about two years. The department recently recast the project proposal with the cost raised four times higher. “Now RHD is demanding Tk 3.18 billion as land-acquisition and-rehabilitation cost from the AK Khan Group for the newly recast Tk 4.52 billion project. It is absolutely ridiculous,” said another company official. Its director Mr Shahadat Hossain said: “The government will build the road to facilitate investment in Bangladesh. But the RHD is delaying its construction through creating some complexities on way to project execution.” He said a Singaporean and a Japanese company are ready to invest in the SEZ. “But they are not coming now due to the road constraint.” The government department says the land-acquisition and-rehabilitation cost has forced them to increase the road cost more than fourfold from the firstly proposed Tk 1.08 billion. Mr Hossain said they are working to develop the land in the SEZ and container-terminal area to build the necessary infrastructure. When the road will be built, they hope the investment will be forthcoming. RHD officials said they sent a Tk 4.52 billion project proposal to the Planning Commission recently to get approval for the Panchdona-Danga-Ghorashal Road construction. They have kept aside Tk 3.18 billion as grants from the AK Khan and Company to construct the road and the rest of the money will be provided by the government.
