Second shipment of rice reaches Tripura through Bangladesh

The second and last consignment of 5000 tonnes of rice has reached India’s landlocked north-eastern state Tripura through Bangladesh, an official of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) says.

"The last consignment of 5,000 tonnes of rice from Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam port arrived at Ashuganj port in Bangladesh. Today (Monday) four rice-loaded trucks entered Nandannagar FCI warehouse from Ashuganj port which is around 37 kilometres from here," said FCI official Nilanjan Chowdhury.

Chowdhury was in charge of the total transportation process.

It is the second consignment of the first phase of 10,000 MT of rice to reach Agartala through Bangladesh.

In August, 5,000 tonnes of rice reached the Tripura capital through the same route – from Andhra Pradesh to Ashuganj port cruising through Meghna River in eastern Bangladesh via Kolkata.

Recently, the FCI floated a new tender to carry another consignment of 10,000 tonnes of rice to Tripura from Kolkata through Bangladesh.

The rice is being ferried via Bangladesh to avoid the long and mountainous surface road up to Tripura via Assam and Meghalaya. This has been necessitated as the rail link to the state with rest of the country has been cut off for gauge conversion work.

The train services in Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram and southern Assam have been suspended from Oct 1.

The gauge-conversion work undertaken by the Northeast Frontier Railways is scheduled to complete by March 2016.

The eight north-eastern states, including Sikkim, are largely dependent on Punjab, Haryana and other bigger states in India for food grains and essential commodities.

Carrying food grains and other essentials from different parts of the country to the north-eastern states of India via Bangladesh is cost-effective.

India has also expressed its desire and recently floated tender to buy rice from Bangladesh and Myanmar.