Sarwaruddin, Ctg Bureau :
The concerned stakeholders , leaders of the business community and the visiting Ambassador of Netherlands opined for construction of a deep seaport at Sonadia under CoxsBazar district with the financial cooperation of the neighbouring India and China. Concerned officials and port users leaders said unless the ensure of the users of the deep seaport , the biggest financial project will not be economically viable.
Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Embassy of Netherlands jointly arranged the views exchange meeting on’ Deep Seaport And Chittagong Port Operation’ at its auditorium on Sunday with Chamber President Mahbubul Alam in the chair.
Director of Chittagong Port Authority Md. Golam Sarwar said neighbouring India and China may extend finance to build the mega project subject to their interest in using the proposed seaport. He said construction of deep seaport is possible with huge investment but he also emphasized the need for ensuring the actual users of this mega port before undergoing the project activities. This views were expressed in the meet as arranaged j ointly by Chittagong Chamber and Netherlands Embassy . The speakers in the meet expressed their views over the importance of deep seaport , regional cooperation, possibilityof fund, internal connectivity, infrastructure, power supply and development existing Ctg Port and increase of its capacity.
In the meet, Netherlands Ambassador Mr. Garben D Young express their interest for providing technical assistance in building the Sonadia Deep seaport . The visiting diplomat mentioned that in case of constructing deep seaport , Roterdam Deep Seaport is the best model globally. He said Dutch companies are also greeted in different countries of the world for their technical assistance in deep seaport. He hoped that the technical experiences and capacity of Netherlands will help to facilitate the construction of Sonadia deep seaport. He also emphasized for ensuring the co mmunication systems other than waterways to carry the consignment from the port and stressed for better road and rail communications supports. He also informed the stakeholders and business leaders to apprise their opinions regarding deepsea port to government.
The visiting diplomat further mentioned that construction of deep seaport is a long process and will take long time and in the meantime the capacity of the existing seaport of Chittagong will have to be increased as because the activities of the existing port will go further after construction of the proposed deep port otherwise the better output will not be achieved.
