Padma bridge tolls will outweigh construction cost: finance minister

Bangladesh put in Tk 301.93 billion on the design of the bridge and tactic streets. Aside from this, the governing administration allotted money for the building of railways on the bridge.

Bangladesh was meant to open the bridge to targeted traffic by Jun 30, but Primary Minister Sheikh Hasina mentioned on Wednesday that the opening of the bridge was delayed until eventually the close of 2022.

“We hope to launch it by the close of this calendar year as the prime minister claimed,” Kamal reported on Thursday after a meeting of a cupboard committee.

The assembly authorised a proposal to appoint a joint venture of Korea Expressway Company and China Main Bridge Engineering Business Confined for a period of 5 yrs at a price of Tk 6.93 billion for the servicing of the bridge and toll assortment.

Questioned about the probable level of toll to cross the bridge, Kamal reported it was not preset but. “You will get to know at the time it’s preset.”

“We can say that we must recover the money spent on this job right up until the very last day from the toll, and we will do it,” he said. “We are accumulating tolls from other initiatives. Tolls will be collected from the bridge as nicely. We will not only accumulate tolls, but we will also make a profit. We will reach more than what we’ve spent on the venture.”

“Normally, we can not move forward. We have to move from one job to one more, from a single bridge to an additional. We have to have income for that.

“This will be a gain-acquire scenario for both people [of the bridge] and the governing administration.”

Questioned how quite a few yrs it would take to commence generating a income from the bridge, Kamal claimed the authorities did not get the job done on it in depth still.