Padma Bridge construction cost to be recovered in 35 years, govt expects

The government expects to recover Padma Bridge's construction cost in the next 35 years, officials said today.

"The toll rate has been set in a calculated way so that the construction cost of the country's biggest bridge could be recovered in the next 35 years," an official of the Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) said.

He said the bridge was constructed with domestic financing, without foreign loans or grants of any type, while the finance ministry provided BBA an amount of Tk 30,000 crore as credit, which "we will have to repay with one percent interest rate in 35 years".

The toll rate was set also considering the issues of VAT and tax, the bridge's management and maintenance alongside the occasional river training, he added.

A BBA statement later substantiated his remarks saying an additional amount of Tk 340 crore would be repaid against the loan of Tk 211 crore taken during design framing of the mega-structure.

It said the vehicle operators using the bridge would have to pay on an average 50 percent more than the fare they used to pay for ferry transportation.

Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) earned Tk 5.60 crore in November 2020 from vehicles it ferried between Mawa and Jajira route while the BBA took the figure as one of the baselines in fixing the Padma Bridge's toll expecting to collect Tk 8.65 crore monthly.

"But this is an initial estimation for now and the amount is not enough to realise the construction and subsequent maintenance costs in 35 years," Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project's director Md Shafiqul Islam told BSS.

He added that the vehicular movements would be enhanced and the toll rate would be re-fixed time to time as well in the coming years to realise the expected amount "as it happened in the case of Bangabandhu Bridge".

BBA officials said Bangabandhu Bridge by now realised the construction cost ahead of the expected timeline.