Chittagong Sea Port and Inland Transport System of Bangladesh : An analysis of the role of efficient hinterland connectivity to facilitate international trade

Globalization has made trade among countries more liberalized and easy, at the same time introduced new challenges such as control of logistics costs and service quality. Hinterland connectivity is considered as one of the critical requirement to ensure the seamless flow of the containers to realize the full potentials of containerization. Bangladesh is lacking the port infrastructure and inland transport facilities to balance with the increasing containerized trade and thus suffering from inefficiency. This is resulting in persistent congestion at the port yard and as a consequence shipping and port costs of Bangladesh are higher than those of some neighboring countries both in terms of price and timing. The study finds that without congestion, road and rail both can save some significant cost of $136/TEU and $38/TEU accordingly. The FOB (Free on Board) of a T-shirt is reduced to $1.266 from $1.28 resulting from the savings, which is very significant for the competitive garment sector. The trucking share of the export and import charge is down to 20% from 36.73% by the improved scenario which is expected to have a strong influence over the competitiveness for the export sector.