Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Dhaka to Sylhet Highway Four Lane Up-gradation


Dhaka-Sylhet highway will be upgraded into four lanes. Up gradation work will begin in next January 2020. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement with the Economic Relations Department (ERD) of the government in this regard. Land acquisition and survey work is now ongoing.

By signing this agreement, last few years uncertainty has been removed for upgrading the highway to four lanes. The information gathered from the Road Transport and Highways Department of the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridge.


According to information, ADB has recently signed an agreement with ERD to upgrade the 226 km long Dhaka-Sylhet highway into four lanes. Under the agreement, ADB will start visible work on the development of the highway in the year 2020. ADB was the first to conduct four lanes expanding work in 2013-14. Later they could not move much further due to some complexity of who would start the up gradation work on the highway.

Now they have been contracted to do the work again. Therefore their previous survey needs to be re-evaluated. So ADB is doing a new survey. Meanwhile, the Roads and Highways Department has started the acquisition for this four-lane up-gradation project. Already, the government has allocated Tk. 3885 Crore for land acquisition and road side utility works. Of this, the allocation in the current fiscal year is Tk. 851 crore.




According to the information, the government was discussing with the ADB to start upgrading the Dhaka-Sylhet highway to four lanes. But in October 2017, the government signed a G2G-based agreement with China Harbor Engineering Company for this work. The project work would start at the beginning of 2018 but the cost proposed by China Harbor Engineering for the project was about 42 percent higher than the estimates of the Department of Roads and Highways (RHD). Later the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges did not accept their proposal.

There was a series of discussions between the two sides. But no solution were found, the work is suspended. At one point, the government decided to complete the project with own financing. DPP was sent to the Planning Commission, but it was sent back for further amendments. The road department adjusts it and sends the revised DPP to the Planning Commission.


Then the Planning Minister mentioned the project as too expensive and ordered to find if there’s any outside funding for it. Soon the project was halted. However, it was said that the project would start before the last national election with the government's own financing. In the end, the government came out of this decision.

The Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Mymensingh highways have already been upgraded into four lanes. Up gradation of the Dhaka-Tangail highway is almost completed. Now the ADB will fund the up-gradation of Dhaka-Sylhet four lane projects. The project was undertaken in order to expand the previously two-lane highway into four lanes.

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