Bangladesh Railway (BR) has requested India to change the guideline of Line of Credit (LoC) to overcome problems it is facing in implementing the Indian government-funded projects, sources said.
The BR officials placed the requests to Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Riva Ganguli Das when a delegation of the high commission, led by the envoy, met Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujon at his office in the capital on Wednesday.
Indian Railway Advisor to Bangladesh Onita Barik was among the three-member Indian high commission delegation.
Railways Secretary M Mofazzel Hossain, BR Director General M Shamsuzzaman and BR officials of different LoC funded projects were present.
According to a press release of the Ministry of Railways, the meeting discussed elaborately about LoC funded ongoing projects including progress of those for which memoranda of understanding were signed during the Bangladesh railways minister's visit to India.
The Indian side placed a request to launch another train service between India and Bangladesh from Rajshahi to Kolkata through Maldaha. Both sides agreed to discuss the issue during the next joint working group meeting, the release added.
Meeting sources said the BR requested the Indian side to conduct feasibility study on the proposed train service first.
The BR has occupied all its carriages in existing train services and new carriages are unlikely to reach before two to three years.
Among other issues discussed in the meeting were change of payment system and increase of the number of consultants of the LoC funded projects.
Sources said BR faces excessive delay in clearing payment of contractors' bills due to the obligation to follow the guideline. Currently, payment claim has to go through four tiers to get clearance from the Exim Bank.
The BR officials requested to allow them to follow the same process of payment they practise in other projects funded by Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to speed up implementation process.
Besides, the BR requested to increase the number of local consultants under the LoC funded projects as 75:25 ratio of international and local consultants stated in the guideline are quite insufficient.
BR informed the Indian side about the change in setting up the Inland Container Depot (ICD) at Sirajganj Bazaar at a small scale.
The Indian side, however, had proposed to set it up at the western side of the Bangabandhu Bridge on river Jamuna after a trial run of container train between India and Bangladesh.
The meeting decided to start construction of infrastructures on the BR-proposed land through mutual agreement.
Progress of other projects including 20 locomotives procurement, Khulna-Mongla rail track development, Dhaka-Tongi third fourth dual gauge lane, Tongi Joydevpur second double line, Syedpur and Pahartoli workshop modernisation were discussed in the meeting.
The meeting agreed to resolve the problems BR faces while dealing with the Indian contractors and consultancy firms.
