Different shipping lines are showing interest in expanding their services to directly connect and quickly transport cargo between the Chattogram port in Bangladesh and those in China, the biggest source for local imports.

This year, two leading shipping lines have gone for the expansion and resumption of services while a new consortium introduced a direct service.

Bangladesh imported goods worth $17.8 billion from the world's second-largest economy in fiscal year (FY) 2022-23 while exporting goods worth $677 million, according to official data.

The previous year it was $20.87 billion and $683 million respectively. The trend over the years shows that bilateral trade is heavily tilted toward China.

Stakeholders said directly connecting with Chinese ports reduces transportation time by around 50 percent from what it takes when vessels make stopovers at transhipment ports in Singapore and Malaysia.

At least 10 shipping lines are currently operating several services between Bangladeshi and Chinese ports, either independently or through joint ventures.

In June this year, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), a leading global container shipping line, resumed its Bengal service deploying six vessels.

The vessels connect Ningbo and Chattogram via Shanghai and Qingdao.

The MSC had introduced this service in 2022 including the transhipment ports of Singapore and Malaysia. The ships stopped calling on the Chinese ports after running for a year.

According to the MSC, the ships are now directly coming to the Chattogram port from the Chinese ports whereas on the return voyage, they are connecting Singapore.

AP Moller-Maersk (Maersk) launched a new ocean shipping service named SH3 to facilitate the growing trade volume between China and Bangladesh. It already had three other services -- SH1, SH2 and IA7.

However, only one trip was run. The service was halted for the time being as the volume of goods was too low following political turmoil in Bangladesh in July and August.

Maersk officials hope for the SH3 service to be resumed soon once the country's foreign trade returns to normalcy.

In another move, Singaporean shipping company Pacific International Lines (PIL) formed a consortium with Interasia Lines and SL Shipping to launch a service called China Chittagong Express (CCE) to directly connect the ports of Bangladesh and China.

On the first voyage, vessel Kota Anguun started off from the Ningbo port on August 31 and stopped at Shanghai and Shekou before reaching the Chattogram port on September 16.

It took nine days to travel from Shekou to Chattogram.

Ahsan Habib, head of operations at the PIL, said through this service, goods can be directly transported from China to Chattogram in nine to 15 days as the ships do not stop at the transhipment ports in Singapore or Malaysia.

Even on the return voyage, the ships would directly sail for Ningbo, he said.

China is a major source for the import of different types of items, including machineries, accessories, commodities as well as raw materials for readymade garment and other industries in Bangladesh.

Around 70 percent of the raw materials of the readymade garment industry are imported from China.

In August, a total of 1.14 lakh twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of import-laden containers and over 8,000 TEUs of empty containers arrived at the Chattogram port.

Muntasir Rubayat, a director of Bangladesh Shipping Agents Association (BSAA), said it was difficult to estimate the exact volume of containerised imports coming directly from China.

A good number of these imports are transported via transhipment ports in Singapore and Malaysia, he said.

According to officials of different shipping lines, close to 60 percent of the total containerised imports bound for Bangladesh comes from China.

They said a good portion of these imports from China are now being transported through direct services offered by different shipping lines.

Data collected from shipping lines show that over 41,000 TEUs of import-laden containers arrived directly from China in August.

Nasir Uddin Chowdhury, chairman of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said the direct shipping services between the two countries would significantly benefit garment exporters.

It will take less time for them to receive the imported raw materials, he said.

Since the export oriented RMG sector works under a timeframe, any sort of savings in time in the supply chain would help the sector become more competitive in the global market, he said.

Bangladesh Freight Forwarders Association (BAFFA) Vice President Kharul Alam Suzan said it usually takes at least a month or more for cargo from China to reach Chattogram via the transhipment ports of Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas, where goods often lie idle for more than a week due to congestion.

He, however, said since exports from Bangladesh to China were very low, the shipping services mostly rely on one-way trade.