Indo-Bangla Pipeline: Hasina, Modi to launch 3 more projects Tuesday
Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi will jointly kick off the ground-breaking ceremony of a cross-border oil pipeline and two key rail connectivity projects this week.
The prime ministers are expected to launch the projects via video conferencing from Dhaka and New Delhi on Tuesday, a week after they launched two railway projects and a power link between the two countries through another video conference. Chief ministers of West Bengal and Tripura Mamata Banerjee and Biplab Kumar Deb also participated.
The oil pipeline will supply one million tonnes of high speed diesel a year to Bangladesh. The diesel is currently transported through a cross-border train from Numaligarh refinery in north eastern state of Assam to Dinajpur in Bangladesh. The railway lines will connect Joydevpur and Tongi with Dhaka, an Indian official said.
Since 2011, India has announced eight billion line of credit to Bangladesh, the highest for any country.
On September 10, Modi and Hasina had launched two railway projects and a power supply link between the two countries.
Modi and Hasina have met three times this year so far, including on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu in August, in Santiniketan in May for inauguration of Bangladesh Bhavan and on the margins of the Commonwealth Summit in London in April.
Both Hasina and Modi had in their speeches on September 10 talked of restoring the pre-1965 connectivity.
In 2015, the two countries decided on the supply of an additional 500 MW power to Bangladesh and this is being done using the transmission link between West Bengal and Bangladesh. On completion of the project launched last week, 1.16 Gigawatts of power is being supplied from India to Bangladesh. Supplies from India meet about 10% of Bangladesh's power requirement.
The Akhaura-Agartala rail connectivity will provide another link between the two countries besides giving the north eastern states access to the nearby Chittagong port.
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