Agartala, Feb 16: To boost trade and people’s movement between India and Bangladesh and to ease the transportation bottleneck of the North East, new waterway connectivity would be created and the central government has sanctioned Rs. 25 crores to build the necessary infrastructures in Tripura for the purpose, Union Ports, Shipping and Waterways Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said here on Tuesday.The Inland Waterways Authority of India, Land Port Authority of India and Tripura government have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to build necessary infrastructure including 10 new jetties on the Gomati River in Tripura to develop a new India-Bangladesh waterway.

Took part in an important MoU signing ceremony between @IWAI_ShipMin, @LPAI_Official and Tripura Govt along with CM Shri @BjpBiplab in Agartala.

10 new Jetties will be built on the Gomati river which will give more Gati to Indo-Bangladesh trade via waterways. pic.twitter.com/h7vxtstZpP

— Sarbananda Sonowal (@sarbanandsonwal) February 15, 2022

Sonowal, accompanied by Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb at the MoU signing ceremony, said that the new waterway would facilitate easy transportation between the northeastern states of India and Bangladesh.

“The proposed waterway would boost trade, people’s movement as passenger and cargo vessels would be operated through this new water route. Tourism industry would get a further boost with the opening of the new waterways,” he told the media.

The central minister said that hydrogeological surveys would be conducted in the other rivers of Tripura to study the possibilities of developing more waterways between India and Bangladesh.

Eight major rivers flow down from Tripura to Bangladesh.

Tripura Chief Minister said that with the opening of new waterways via Bangladesh, the distance between Tripura and Haldia port in West Bengal would be only 600 km and it would facilitate transportation of construction materials and other goods at a much cheaper cost and saving time.

He said that as a giant bridge was constructed over the river Feni in southern Tripura, the state would also be soon connected with the Chittagong international port to ferry various goods and heavy machinery easily.

The Chittagong international sea port in Bangladesh is 75 km from southern Tripura.

As part of a trial run for shipping of goods from other parts of India to the northeast region via Bangladesh, the first consignment of goods from Bangladesh was ferried to Tripura by waterway in September 2020.

Agartala via Guwahati is 1,650 km from Kolkata by road, and 2,637 km from New Delhi while the distance between Agartala and Kolkata via Bangladesh is just 620 km.

India and Bangladesh had earlier signed a MoU to ferry various goods including food-grains from different parts of India to the mountainous northeastern states using Bangladeshi ports and surface roads to save time and transportation costs.

The eight northeastern states surrounded by China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal are connected with other parts of the country by road via narrow land corridors through Assam and West Bengal, but this route passes through mountainous terrain with steep gradients and multiple hairpin bends, making plying of vehicles, especially loaded trucks, very difficult, risky and time consuming.