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Published : 03 Feb 2013, 09:05 AM
While Malaysia has sought to operate the bridge for thirty years, India is only prepared to provide $1 billion, diverting most of it from the line of credit it announced two years ago to fund infrastructure development in Bangladesh.
Both seem unacceptable to Bangladesh.
The Malaysians are trying to do business for a long time with the bridge, the Indian funds will not be adequate,” a senior Bangladesh official said, but was unwilling to be named.
On the other hand, the China Railway Bridge Bureau Group Co. Ltd has proposed to build the bridge on the build-own-transfer (BOT) basis by investing $2 billion, which is 70 percent of the project cost at current prices.
More important, it promises to complete the project by following the existing design in three years which, going by its track record and those of other Chinese infrastructure companies, is entirely possible.
Bangladesh will have to bear only 30 per cent of the project’s cost, $900 million at current prices, which it is not entirely incapable off, the official said.
This Chinese company has the experience of building the 36-kilometre-long Hangzhou Bay Bridge in China over the sea.
But for building the 6.15 km Padma bridge, it proposes to form a consortium of three Chinese companies and rope in the Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA).
The official said the Chinese company would borrow part of the $2.0 billion investment from a state-owned commercial bank, which the Bangladesh government would have to repay it in 20 years without any interest or interest at very nominal rate.
The Chinese propose to procure all materials on their own and allow Bangladesh appoint an international company to monitor the project, specially the quality and safety aspects.
The official said that the Bangladesh has been in parleys with several foreign sources like China, India and Malaysia after the World Bank raised a stinker over corruption charges last year.
“It is not that we don’t know the options. We have also assessed the pros and cons of the various offers. I think we can start the basic work with our own resources and finalise the foreign funding in a short time,” he said.
Speed and quality as well as the capacity to bear the bulk of the project cost, now that the JICA and ADB have both backed off from the project, makes the Chinese company the front runner for what is easily Bangladesh’s largest infrastructure project to date.
“The Chinese come ideal to a government under pressure to deliver on a prestige project like the Padma bridge,” said India’s former military engineer P.K. Ghosh, who has build many bridges in the difficult Himalayan terrain. "The Indians can match their quality but not their speed, either in the technical execution or in mobilising finance."
But India will suffer considerable unease if the Chinese bag the Padma bridge project because that will get India’s bete noire huge publicity mileage and goodwill in Bangladesh for years to come.
“It would be ideal if India do this bridge for Bangladesh but if we can’t, the Chinese will take it and do a good job of it,” said Ghosh.
The only thing about the Chinese company that Bangladesh may not find acceptable is their proposal to bring down their own workforce.
The Chinese mobilise their own workforce everywhere, even in distant Africa, because that ensures the speed of the execution.
But in highly-populated Bangladesh, this will mean tens of thousands of its own people work and livelihood on a huge project that will bring forth undoubted political mileage for the party in power, specially in an election year.
