Padma bridge tolls will outweigh construction cost: finance minister

Bangladesh put in Tk 301.93 billion on the development of the bridge and method roads. Apart from this, the authorities allocated money for the construction of railways on the bridge.

Bangladesh was meant to open the bridge to site visitors by Jun 30, but Primary Minister Sheikh Hasina claimed on Wednesday that the opening of the bridge was delayed right up until the close of 2022.

“We hope to start it by the end of this yr as the primary minister claimed,” Kamal mentioned on Thursday soon after a conference of a cabinet committee.

The conference accepted a proposal to appoint a joint undertaking of Korea Expressway Corporation and China Main Bridge Engineering Business Limited for a period of 5 many years at a price tag of Tk 6.93 billion for the routine maintenance of the bridge and toll assortment.

Asked about the achievable fee of toll to cross the bridge, Kamal claimed it was not mounted however. “You will get to know once it truly is fixed.”

“We can say that we ought to get well the resources used on this undertaking till the very last working day from the toll, and we will do it,” he reported. “We are amassing tolls from other projects. Tolls will be gathered from the bridge as very well. We will not only collect tolls, but we will also make a earnings. We will obtain a lot more than what we’ve spent on the project.”

“Or else, we are not able to transfer forward. We have to transfer from one undertaking to a different, from 1 bridge to an additional. We need revenue for that.

“This will be a earn-get condition for the two buyers [of the bridge] and the federal government.”

Asked how several several years it would get to start out building a revenue from the bridge, Kamal claimed the authorities did not get the job done on it in depth still.