Report

QUANTIFICATION OF BENEFITS FROM TRANSPORT AND TRADE FACILITATION IN SOUTH ASIA 75
The total length of the Kolkata-Dhaka corridor
through Petrapole/Benapole and Jessor is 350 km.
Petrapole is about 95 km from Kolkata, which is the
final transshipment area for commodities across the
country that are carried over to Bangladesh. Even on
poor roads which are typical of the subregion, the
distance can be covered by a truck in about 10 hours if
there are no barriers or drastic choke points. The
distance may be covered in 2 days, if one includes the
time for inspections on both sides of the border, but in
actuality, the average times for the Kolkata-Dhaka trip
is 5–7 days. There are bottlenecks all along the corridor
due to high congestion and encroachments on the road,
and delays at the cross border point of Petrapole/
Benapole. 8
The infrastructure is poor on both sides. On the
Bangladesh side, there are delays in inspection of trucks
and processing the documentation, the storage facilities
are poor, and crossing the Padma river is problematic.
The Indian side has graver constraints, the main
problems being:
Fig 9.2 Corridor 5A: Kolkata-Petrapole/Benapole-Jessore-
Dhaka (to Mongla and Chittagong)
• Kolkata-Petrapole road is extremely narrow,
particularly the 60 km stretch from Barasat to
Petrapole. The area is densely populated with
markets and trees along the road.
• The Naobhanga Bridge, 3 km from Petrapole, is
narrow and only one 15–18 tonnes truck can pass
at a time. Higher capacity shipments need to be
reshipped in smaller trucks at Bongaon.
• There is no bonded warehousing facility.
Bangladesh imports are transshipped into the
inadequate, ill maintained and water-logged noman’s
land area in front of customs office.
• Customs operations are adversely affected by the
erratic power supply.
• There is only a single gate both for passengers and
cargo traffic and there is lack of basic infrastructure
and facilities for truckers and passengers such as
toilets, medical services, drinking water, fire
stations, etc. There are no bus links from Petrapole
to Kolkata and available taxi service is expensive.
• Cross-border inspections and documentation and
unsynchronised work hours are cumbersome.
• There is no containerisation of cargo.
Das and Pohit (2005) show that while the average
time loss for exports from India at other borders is 21
hours, it is 99 hours (or four days) at Petrapole. The
maximum loss occurs in parking, customs clearances,
and crossing the border which is 78 hours for each
shipment. Unloading at Benapole takes an additional
9 hours. This results in auxiliary time loss of about
10% of shipment value. The total costs for Kolkata-
Petrapole route is on average Rs 2543 in comparison
of Rs 1752 for other national highways in India for
the same 95 km distance (or Rs 27 per km for this
stretch as against to Rs 18 for other national highways).
Furthermore, Pohit and Taneja (2003) indicated that
Table 9.4 Transaction Time and Cost for India’s Overland Exports to Bangladesh
Subramanian and Arnold Das and Pohit De and Ghosh
(2001) (2006) (2006)
Survey year: 1998 Survey year: 2002 Survey year: 2005
Transaction costs (% of shipment value) – 10.38 16.80
Border crossing delays (days) 2.5 3.63 3.92
Types of documents required at border (No) 29 – 17
Copies of documents required at border (No) 118 – 67
8
Padeco (2005). Land borders are the most utilised routes for trade between the countries in the subregion. There are five
recognised road-based Indo-Bangladesh land-border routes – Petrapole, Dawki, Mahdipur, Hilli, and Changrabandha. The
Petrapole–Benapole route, including ferry crossing to greater Dhaka, has the heaviest movement in terms of value, accounting
for about 70% of India’s export to Bangladesh (ADB 2000).