Increasing our maritime awareness

Being a littoral state, we are naturally blessed with an access to the outside world for unhindered maritime trade and commerce via the sea. More than 90 percent of our trade, including 100 percent oil transportation takes place by the sea. But, not very encouraging for us, Chittagong is the only major port handling about 92 percent of the total import-export. This 'economic engine' has recently seen a substantial increase in container traffic growth, which is about 14 percent. Subject to its capacity enhancement, this commercial hub has the potential to contribute immensely to our national economy, including employment generation. 

The second port at Mongla, besides its inherent disadvantages of long routing and navigation problem, is still underutilised because of expensive road connectivity. Despite limitations, the port is making profits and it is believed that its operation will multiply once the Padma Bridge comes up. Another port at Patuakhali's Payra has come up lately, but needs more time to be fully operational. Thus, coping with the growing trend of trade and commerce is quite challenging for us, in which case, enhancing existing port facilities and building a deep sea port could be better options. 

Bangladesh is heavily dependent on foreign carriers, as nearly 2,500 foreign ships visit our ports annually. Such dependence is not good for our economy because a lot of foreign currency is being spent to meet their freight charge. Bangladesh has only 74 registered merchant ships, of which the Bangladesh Shipping Corporation (BSC) has just eight vessels having a total deadweight tonnage of 121,820 metric tons. The fleet strength is even lesser than many private enterprises of the world. Our private participation in the shipping business is not encouraging either; hence, the country needs more and more individual entrepreneurship to enhance the size of the existing fleet. 

Bangladesh has not yet been able to optimise the full potential for supplying skilled mariners to the international market. Our contribution till now is about 4,000 skilled mariners out of 160 million people, which is in no way close to the world's largest producer the Philippines that supplies around 400,000 marine-sector experts. Although this sector has enormous prospects, our youth are still unaware of this golden opportunity. 

Bangladesh owns more than 1,18,813 square kilometres of sea territory. The sovereignty of our state, according to Article 2(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, extends to a zone called 'Territorial Sea' up to a maximum limit of 12 nautical miles. Under the same convention, Article 55 grants us the sovereign right to enjoy 200 nautical miles 'Exclusive Economic Zone' (EEZ), including its seabed resources from the baseline from which the breadth of the 'Territorial Sea' is measured. Although the country has exclusive rights over all living and non-living resources in the EEZ, the means available are not sufficient to optimise them fully. Our portion of the sea hosts three potential fishing grounds and contains 475 different species of fish. Compared to the vast territory, our fishing activity is extremely limited as merely 200 fishing trawlers are currently operating in the bay and that too to a maximum distance of 60 kilometres, mostly because of a lack of deep sea operation capabilities. In order to exploit full fishing potential, we need to reach out to the furthest limit of our sea, and in this case, both public and private initiatives are required to introduce technology based deep sea fishing, of course, keeping the Marine Protected Areas (MPA) safe. 

Our sea can serve us with energy, including oil and gas. Until today, only two gas fields have been discovered at sea, but more marine scientific surveys using state of the art technology are necessary to discover further reserves. Delay in exploration is unlikely to bring any positive result for us; hence, we can think of collaborations between private and public sectors for extracting precious natural energy from the sea.

Finally, the issue of maintaining good order at sea is a vital maritime security concern. Maritime crimes like petty thefts, armed robbery and killings, smuggling and illegal trafficking of people, goods, arms and drugs, illegal poaching and fishing, and deliberate pollution are regular challenges being confronted by maritime law enforcers. The most serious issue occurs when people attempt to seek fortune by the sea, which often leads to loss of life or abject misery. 

There is no denying that our maritime association has increased a lot as evident from the recently launched initiatives during the past few years. Nevertheless, further engagement is necessary to realise the full maritime potential, in particular, increasing port facilities, shipping fleets, deep-sea fishing and initiatives to extract marine resources, and overall, ensuring law and order at sea. We cannot forget that the sea is the mainstay of our economic system, and the future of the country depends immensely upon its effective and efficient use.

The writer is the Commanding Officer of a Bangladesh Navy Ship.