Business Desk :
Bangladesh has been readying physical infrastructures to establish connectivity with all its neighbours over the last 50 years, although experts are still doubtful of getting benefits from it.
Academicians and think tanks argued of lacking in integrating development plans of necessary infrastructures among neighbouring countries
They also said trade facilitation development and removal of trade and non-trade barriers still remains a challenge for the country to reap the benefit from the regional connectivity with India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar.
Competitions among the countries mainly India and Myanmar to develop new ports and related facilities inside their territories other than linking with the Bangladesh corridor have now raised the need for further study in finding the viability of investing billions of dollars in various projects.
They particularly mentioned Payra Port.
According to officials of concerned ministries, Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges (MoRTB), Ministry of Shipping (MoS) and Ministry of Railways (MoR) have made good progress in developing various corridors to link with neighbouring countries for trade and people to people movement.
The officials said the MoRTB has already started developing various parts of corridors under Asian Highway (AH) 1, 2 and 41 after studying feasibility of more than 1700 kilometre artery of the country in 2015. Another 500 km road infrastructure development plans are also under the feasibility study.
Apart from AH, Bangladesh is part of regional corridors under SAARC, SASEC, BIMST-EC, BCIM and BIMSTEC Road Corridor. BBIN is a subregional corridor taking part in the SAARC routes.
