POBNEWS24, Dhaka June 25, 2022 :
New horizons of road communication of the country are being unveiled today. The inauguration is the dream Padma Bridge, which will also showcase Bangladesh’s ability to build large infrastructure with domestic funding.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the Padma Bridge on Saturday morning. Only cars of the Prime Minister and guests will cross the bridge after the inauguration. Tomorrow, Sunday morning, normal vehicles will start plying through the bridge.
The Padma Bridge directly connects 19 districts in the south and south-west by road. Concrete and steel structures are bridging the social and economic links between the two ends of the Padma River. However, this bridge is not just a big infrastructure, it is a ‘mega’ project implemented in Bangladesh for the first time without foreign funding. It is a bridge built over the intoxicated Padma by overcoming various technical complications. This is the end of the long wait of the people and traders of the southern and south-western districts.
Commencement of Padma Bridge project in 1999 through pre-feasibility study. The main work started at the end of 2014. The work did not stop even for a day after the start.
Own financing, own ability
Major development projects in Bangladesh have been and are being implemented with loan assistance from various countries and development partners. The exception in this case is the Padma Bridge. It has been fully funded in the country’s money. This means that no loan has been taken from any country for this bridge.
After the design of the Padma Bridge project was finalized, the government signed loan agreements with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), JICA and Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to finance the project between April and June 2011. But the World Bank alleges corruption in hiring consultants to oversee construction. One by one, all the financing institutions announced the suspension of the promised funding.
The Malaysian government came up with a proposal to join the project after others, including the World Bank, suspended funding. After discussing this for some time, it did not go ahead. At a cabinet meeting on July 9, 2012, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina decided to build the Padma Bridge with her own funds. The government informed the international financial institutions not to take money for the Padma bridge.
Meanwhile, after an investigation in 2014, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) said no evidence of corruption was found in the Padma Bridge project. In 2016, a court in Toronto, Canada also said that they did not find proper evidence of a conspiracy to commit corruption in the Padma Bridge project.
When the government announced the construction of the bridge with its own funds after the development partners including the World Bank withdrew from the Padma Bridge project, two concerns came to the fore. Whether foreign contractors will come to build the bridge. Because it is thought that the least developed countries cannot pay the contractors in foreign currency without foreign funding. 2. Whether the Bangladesh government will be able to pay for the Padma bridge from the budget. However, Bangladesh has been able to build the bridge by dispelling these two doubts.
After deciding to build the Padma Bridge with its own funds, the government has allocated money in the budget according to the demand every year. With this money, the project authority bought foreign currency from the state-owned Agrani Bank and paid the contractor’s dues on time.
During the implementation of the bridge, Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves have not been strained, but have increased. Now the reserves are more than 4,100 crore (41 billion) dollars, which was about 1,532 crore (15 billion) dollars in the 2012-13 financial year. The government has not been able to finance other projects to implement the Padma Bridge, which is not the case. Instead, the government has taken new big projects.
Padma Bridge Project Director. Shafiqul Islam told Prothom Alo that while working as a R&D engineer, he had the experience of not getting money on time in the revenue sector projects and not having the necessary allocation. For this, many projects have to be stopped. But I didn’t have to worry about money for a day on the Padma Bridge. The contractor never complained about the debt. This project is really unique, the best he has ever seen.
