Finance Minister AMA Muhith has said the progress of the work of metro rail will be sped up as the scheme has been marked as a fast-track project.
The minister was speaking to journalists yesterday after a meeting with the outgoing chief representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency Takao Toda. The new Jica Representative Mikio Hateada arrived in Dhaka on November 18.
Dr Takao Toda, however, said the progress of the work on metro rail was sluggish due to a lack of Bangladeshi engineers in the project.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on October 30 laid the foundation stone for the country’s first-ever metro rail project.
Of the total cost of Tk22,000 crore taka (around $2.8bn), Jica, a governmental agency of Japan, will provide about Tk16,500 crore, while the Bangladesh Government will provide the rest.
In the first phase, 11km would be completed by 2019, 4.4km more by 2020, and the remaining 4.7km by 2022.
On Wednesday, a meeting of the Fast Track Project Monitoring Committee at the Prime Minister’s Office decided that six projects including the Padma bridge, a deep sea port and the metro rail, with a total cost of $15.5bn, would be marked as fast-track. The projects are expected to remake the country’s economic outlook, improve communications and accelerate GDP growth.
Minister also said, “We are comfortable working with Jica because the Japanese development agency has enhanced financial and technical support in the last ten years.”
He also said Asian Development Bank was also a good development partner of Bangladesh.
“We have taken concession loans from ADB but in the near future we will take non-concession loans from them,” he said.
Muhith also hoped that new government’s development would be visible in the next five years “just as in the last five years.”