Banglar Bir
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OBAR ROAD+ MARITIME MAPS+CPEC
- Thread starter Banglar Bir
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Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
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- Messages
- 7,805
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- Country
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Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Banglar Bir
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2006
- Messages
- 7,805
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Geopolitics hamper modernization of Bangladesh ports
Turloch Mooney, Senior Editor, Global Ports | Oct 19, 2016 2:02PM EDT
The port of Chittagong, pictured, is working well above its designed capacity, but Bangladesh has no alternative maritime gateways.
The competition to develop much-needed modern port facilities in Bangladesh has intensified following the recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the South Asian country.
Despite the clear need for a new port, and plenty of commercial incentives to build one, projects have been slow to materialize, as China, Japan, and India fight for the right to provide financing, and with that a ticket to build their influence in the country and in the region.
During the presidential visit, China committed $24 billion for the development of infrastructure projects, but no details were provided on investment in port infrastructure despite years of attempts on the part of Beijing to finance the construction of a new deep-sea port in the country.
After 10 years of average annual GDP growth of 6 percent, Bangladesh desperately needs modern port infrastructure.
More than 90 percent of its foreign trade and almost all of its containers are currently handled by Chittagong port. Essentially a river port, located 16 kilometers (10 miles) up the Karnaphuli River from the Bay of Bengal, Chittagong has a draft of only 9.2 meters (30 feet), requiring the costly practice of transferring cargo from large to small vessels before berthing and discharge.
More than half of the cargo berths at the port’s three main terminals, some of which date back to the 1940s, are in poor condition, and the port is regularly congested. In a circular to customers in July of this year, NYK Line said its vessels were forced to stay in port for up to six days, two times longer than normal, owing to what it described as unprecedented levels of congestion. As recently as the end of September port operations were again paralyzed, this time by a trucker strike that left 40,000 containers piled up in port yards stocked beyond their already limited capacity.
Bangladesh’s export sector is expected to eclipse $50 billion in value by 2021 as global demand for its ready-made woven and knitted garments, frozen foods, jute, and leather continues to rise. Imports, too, are on the rise, particularly petroleum products, edible oils, cotton, and machinery and equipment.
A joint port development study completed last year by HPC Hamburg Port Consulting, an HHLA subsidiary, together with two other companies, forecasts container throughput at Chittagong will rise to 2.9 million twenty-foot-equivalent units by 2020 and 5.1 million TEUs by 2040.
Bulk throughput is expected to rise to 44 million tonnes (48.5 million tons) by 2023 and 73.3 million tonnes by 2043. The dry bulk segment is forecast to book average annual growth of 3.9 percent to 55.5 million tonnes by 2043, driven by high demand for cement clinker, reflecting the large potential of the construction sector.
Despite all this growth, Bangladesh's efforts to build new port infrastructure have continued to stumble.
The country is a major component of China’s Belt and Road maritime agenda and Beijing was originally due to build a new deep-sea port at Sonadia in the south of Bangladesh. However, in February of this year, the China Harbour Engineering Company project was scrapped by the Dhaka government following what is thought to have been intense political pressure from India and the United States, both of whom are concerned over China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean region.
Another port, planned for Pyra on the northwest coast of the Bay of Bengal, and also originally to be a Chinese development, was subsequently turned into a joint project of several countries with significant involvement from India.
Japan has been making better headway recently. Earlier this year, a signing ceremony took place for a multi-billion dollar port and power plant project in Matarbari in the south of Bangladesh with majority funding from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
That project will cost $4.6 billion, of which it will provide $3.4 billion, and includes development of two 600 MW, coal-fired power plants and 18-meter draft port capable of handling vessels up to 80,000 deadweight tonnes, according to the Japanese development agency.
At the same time, HHLA of Hamburg said it has been selected by the Chittagong Port Authority to carry out a feasibility study for the “Bay Terminal” to be built on the Patenga coast, close to the existing Chittagong port. The containers-focused facility would have a maximum draft of 14 meters, allowing larger vessels to call at Chittagong for the first time, and would be part-funded by the Asian Development Bank.
Whether or not the Bay Terminal project materializes remains to be seen, but for now Bangladesh’s quest for modern port facilities to support its trade potential continues, as does the risk of political delays due to its geopolitical importance.
Contact Turloch Mooney at turloch.mooney@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on Twitter: @TurlochMooney.
Iran, China seal New Silk Road deal
Mon Oct 31, 2016 7:28P
Iran and China have finalized an agreement which allows Chinese traders to use the Iranian territory for exports to Europe as envisaged in an ambitious plan by Beijing named the New Silk Road initiative.
Iran says it has finalized a cooperation agreement with China that would allow Chinese traders to use the Iranian territory for exports to Europe.
The agreement was signed between customs officials of Iran and China. It is expected to take an ambitious plan by China to revive the ancient Silk Road one step closer to reality, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.
Preparations are currently being made to implement the agreement in the new future, the news agency added. Accordingly, Chinese goods will be shipped to Iran’s southern ports and will be thereon transited to Europe by land. The route that has been envisaged for the scheme will be much shorter that the ancient Silk Road, IRNA added.
The preliminaries for the project were agreed on during a state visit to Tehran by China’s President Xi Jinping in January.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the new "Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Maritime Silk Road" initiative to connect stronger logistics networks with Asia, Africa and Europe by building more roads, railways and airports.
Beijing has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with $100 billion in capital and the New Silk Road Fund with a capital of $40 billion to fund major infrastructure projects in the region, including those pertaining to the development of the New Silk Road.
Iran is strategically-located in the Middle East, sharing land borders with 15 nations, and sea channels on its northern and southwestern coasts. China has already made it clear that it sees Iran as a country that can play a crucial role in its New Silk Road initiative given its access to extensive delivery routes connecting to the Middle East and Eurasia.
Where Is China's Silk Road Actually Going?
At the Boao Forum, China provided the clearest overview yet of its ambitious Silk Road plans.
By Shannon Tiezzi
March 30, 2015
The Boao Forum for Asia, an annual economic dialogue held in China’s Hainan Province, was an especially high-profile meeting this year; Chinese President Xi Jinping himself delivered the keynote address. The reason for the special emphasis was clear: Beijing selected the Boao Forum as the venue to deliver the first in-depth explanation of China’s vision for the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, collectively known as the “Belt and Road.”
During the Boao Forum, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), in conjunction with China’s Foreign Ministry and Commerce Ministry, issued an action plan for the Belt and Road. Xinhua provided an English-language translation of the document. Beijing is not shy about its ambitions for the project — “The plan is expected to change the world political and economic landscape through development of countries along the routes, most of which are eager for fresh growth,” Xinhua wrote. Beijing hopes that annual trade volume between China and “Belt and Road” countries will “surpass 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars in a decade or so,” Xi said.
The plan is geographically ambitious as well, envisioning the Belt and Road as encompassing Asia, Africa, and Europe and their near seas. The land route “focuses on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe,” the document noted. The Silk Road is envisioned as “a new Eurasian Land Bridge” created by transportation routes, with “core cites” as links in the chain. There were less details on the maritime route, though the plan noted there would be two legs: one linking China to the Indian Ocean via the South China Sea and the other traveling through the South China Sea to the South Pacific. There was no list of concrete projects associated with the Belt and Road, but China held up the $23 billion worth of deals just signed with Kazakhstanas a model for other countries.
The document laid out the basic goals of the Belt and Road:
“It is aimed at promoting orderly and free flow of economic factors, highly efficient allocation of resources and deep integration of markets; encouraging the countries along the Belt and Road to achieve economic policy coordination and carry out broader and more in-depth regional cooperation of higher standards; and jointly creating an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture that benefits all.”
The Belt and Road are often understood primarily as infrastructure projects. Indeed, that will be the main focus in the early stages, as Chinese leaders have repeatedly spoken of infrastructure as a “bottleneck” preventing further economic cooperation. But there’s more to the Belt and Road than simply the construction of roads, railways, and ports. Even on the infrastructure front, China’s vision to “form an infrastructure network connecting all sub-regions in Asia, and between Asia, Europe and Africa” includes energy and communications infrastructure as well an transportation.
Infrastructure construction is the easy part, as many countries along the planned route are hungry for investment and funding. China’s more ambitious goal is to have countries coordinate their policies to ensure that each individual country’s economic development plan feeds into a larger regional vision. That includes free trade areas, both bilaterally and regionally, as well as broad financial integration. On the financial front, Beijing wants expanded bilateral currency swap deals. Funding for the Belt and Road projects will be carried out through the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China’s own Silk Road Fund, and eventually through a hoped-for financing mechanism administered by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Belt and Road has political overtones as well, with China using the project as a vehicle to promote its own key foreign policy tenets, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. The Five Principles are “mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Those principles, laid out in a 1954 treaty with India and Myanmar, celebrated their official 60th anniversary last July.
China envisions the Five Principles as the basis for a uniquely Asian regional foreign policy, one that frowns upon Western-style “interference” in other countries over human rights concerns. Xi was also quite clear in his remarks that the Asian security architecture should leave behind the “Cold War mentality” to explore “new security concepts” — echoing China’s previous calls for a shift away from the U.S.-led alliance structure that currently lynchpins regional security.
China set up a leading group to oversee implementation of the Belt and Road, making it clear that this initiative is a political priority. “Construction of the belt and road is a huge and systematic job … that calls for strengthened leadership and coordination of domestic and foreign affairs,” the leading group said in a statement announcing its formation.
As part of the preparation for the Belt and Road, China will work with other countries “so that they gain a better understanding of the initiative,” Xinhua said. That may be a tacit acknowledgement that some other countries are wary that the Belt and Road is China’s attempt to assert regional hegemony. Xi tried to dispel these fears in his Boao speech, promising that China will not dominate the plan. The Belt and Road “will be a real chorus comprising all countries along the routes, not a solo for China itself,” Xi said.
12:00 AM, October 16, 2016 / LAST MODIFIED: 11:03 AM, October 16, 2016
Silk Road in South Asia: Designed to be a game changer?
Shakhawat Liton
Building new Silk Road trade routes -- an ambitious project masterminded by Chinese President Xi Jinping -- appears a game changer in South Asia's regional politics.
During his landmark visit, Dhaka agreed to give full support to his initiative. Earlier, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, three Saarc members, agreed to the plan.
In 2014-15, the Chinese leader visited India and the three countries, and China inked deals worth billions of dollars for development projects in those countries. At the time, Beijing signed deals worth $46 billion with Pakistan, $20 billion with India, $1.4 billion with Sri Lanka and worth $500 million with the Maldives.
India, however, still remains hesitant about joining the bandwagon as many of its policymakers think that China wants to increase its influence in the region through this initiative.
"A rising China has steadily used its economic and military clout to woo Indian's neighbours and incorporate them in its ambitious One Belt, One Road project," said Pinak Ranjan Chakroborty, a former Indian diplomat.
Read: Bangladesh-China Joint Statement
Pinak, a distinguished fellow of Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), in an article styled "China-Bangladesh bonhomie: India needs to restrategise as the Dragon woos this neighbour" wrote about Bangladesh-China's agreement to jointly advance the idea of building new Silk Road under One Belt, One Road Initiative.
"It is an essential component of China's concerted move to woo India's neighbours and drive a wedge between them," he wrote in his article posted on CatchNews on Friday.
After his two-day state visit, Xi left Dhaka yesterday morning for Goa, India, to attend BRICS Summit.
Apart from signing government-to-government deals worth $24.45 billion during his visit, Dhaka and Beijing upgraded their relations to strategic partnership. In addition, private Chinese companies pledged $13.6 billion in investment in Bangladesh.
"Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed BRICS leaders who began arriving in Goa on the eve of the Summit, China threw in the usual hoopla with President Xi Jinping making a strategic stopover in Bangladesh," said The Tribune, an English daily in India, yesterday.
"Xi's Dhaka visit is strategically placed since Bangladesh has traditionally been a close ally of India and for China, it is another nation in the South Asian region where it wants a bigger footprint," it said.
Last year, Modi had announced a $2 billion credit line during his visit to Dhaka, but Chinese generosity has dwarfed that, the report added.
"His [Xi] trip comes at a time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading efforts to boost ties with neighbouring countries, from Sri Lanka to Nepal, by offering them a share of India's fast-growing economy," said a Reuters report published in the Times of India on Friday.
The Chinese investment with the aim of building Silk Road has empowered Pakistan to counter Indian's offensive against it.
After the Uri attack in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed and for which India blamed Pakistan, India has been pursuing a strategy to isolate Pakistan globally and also in the South Asian region.
It has been successful as most Saarc members last month refused to attend Saarc summit scheduled for November in Islamabad. After India declined to attend the summit, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka came up with the same decision, citing a lack of atmosphere conducive to join the summit. Their pulling out was viewed as a significant step in that direction for the grouping.
Since then, India has moved to build a new sub-regional group with members of the Saarc, excluding Pakistan. It has planned to strengthen BIMSTEC, a regional group of countries in South Asia and South East Asia.
At the invitation of the Indian PM, heads of the states and governments of other Saarc member countries are attending a BRICS regional outreach. Pakistan has not been invited by India, host of the summit.
BRICS has a tradition of having an outreach event with the region where the host country is located. This time, instead of the Saarc countries, which includes Pakistan, Delhi has decided to invite the BIMSTEC countries -- Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
Pakistan did not remain silent. Islamabad is exploring the possibility of creating a greater South Asian economic alliance to counter India's controlling hold on the Saarc, said a report in the Dawn, a leading English newspaper of Pakistan.
“A greater South Asia is already emerging,” said Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed. “This greater South Asia includes China, Iran and the neighbouring Central Asian republics,” said the Dawn report, quoting the Pakistani senator who was visiting Washington last week.
In this initiative, Pakistan's strength is the good relation with China and huge Chinese investment deals worth $46 billion inked between the two countries during Xi Jinping's visit to Islamabad last year to build China-Pakistan economic corridor.
China's relations with Pakistan may also frustrate India's move to use BRICS summit to rebuke Pakistan.
"While BRICS is an economic forum, India will use this opportunity to try to push forward its own agenda on terror. Sources say India will try to convince each nation to issue statements condemning terror in an effort to globally isolate Pakistan. But China is expected to play the usual spoiler," said The Tribune in a report yesterday.
Russia also may not agree with such an Indian move as Moscow has evinced interest in selling fighter jets and other military hardware to Islamabad. Last month, Russia and Pakistan had conducted military exercise.
The Chinese leader's visit to Dhaka has been viewed by the Indian media as significant.
China may put renewed pressure on India to join its idea for building the Silk Road trade routes during the BRICS summit as most of India's neighbours in South Asia are falling in line with the Chinese ambitious initiative, according to a leading English daily of India.
"The Chinese president will surely take the opportunity of his interactions during the BRICS summit to impress upon India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi that by not joining the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative], New Delhi is missing out an opportunity for economic development," said the Hindustan Times yesterday.
The Chinese leader's visit and subsequently upgraded ties between the two countries would not only boost the role of Bangladesh in the region, but also give it an edge in BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach summit, said China.org.cn, an official web portal of China.
"When Shiekh Hasina comes to Goa, fortified by the new partnership with China, she would be setting Bangladesh on a bold, new course with a clear-cut strategy for balancing relations between neighbours (meaning India) and global powers (read, China)," said the web portal in the article styled "Xi creates webs en route to BRICS."
Nepal, a Saarc member, seems willing to join Xi's ambitious project.
A few months back, the Nepalese government was considered as close to China. But the new government is known close to India. Following the change in the political landscape, Xi Jinping has delayed his visit to Nepal.
Now, Nepalese foreign experts recommend the Nepalese government to use the BRICS Summit to ensure Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit, said a report by The Himalayan, an English daily of Nepal, on Thursday.
Former foreign secretary Madhu Raman Acharya said Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal should talk about the purported visit while he would meet the Chinese head of the state in India, said the report.
In the last three years, Xi visited many countries along the ancient Silk Route, and Beijing signed many deals with the countries, promising to invest billions of dollars in different sectors, particularly for infrastructure development.
Under the "One Belt, One Road" initiative comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the Asian giant is focusing on building a trade and infrastructure network for connecting Asian countries with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.
China, the world's largest exporter of goods since 2009, needs such a network to maintain its double digit growth by opening new markets for its consumer goods and to increase its dominance over the region in a peaceful manner in the name of trade, say analysts.
Beijing looks to garner international favour through a massive investment effort in Europe and Asia to surpass the US on the world stage, said Sputnik in a report on June 3.
In recent years, China planned infrastructure projects involving over $200 billion for construction, and $1 trillion for other projects are on the horizon, dwarfing US foreign investment by several orders of magnitude, said the Russian news outlet.
China's 'New Silk Road' Vision Revealed
A new series in Xinhua offers the clearest vision yet of China’s ambitious “New Silk Road.”
By Shannon Tiezzi
May 09, 2014
On Thursday, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency unveiled an ongoing feature entitled “New Silk Road, New Dreams.” The series promises to “dig up the historical and cultural meaning of the Silk Road, and spread awareness of China’s friendly policies towards neighboring countries.” The first article [Chinese] was titled “How Can the World Be Win-Win? China Is Answering the Question.”
The Xinhua series promises the clearest look so far at China’s vision for its Silk Road Economic Belt as well as the Maritime Silk Road. One of the most intriguing pieces released Thursday was a map showing China’s ambitious visions for the “New Silk Road” and “New Maritime Silk Road.” It’s the clearest vision to date of the scope of China’s Silk Road plan.
According to the map, the land-based “New Silk Road” will begin in Xi’an in central China before stretching west through Lanzhou (Gansu province), Urumqi (Xinjiang), and Khorgas (Xinjiang), which is near the border with Kazakhstan. The Silk Road then runs southwest from Central Asia to northern Iran before swinging west through Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. From Istanbul, the Silk Road crosses the Bosporus Strait and heads northwest through Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Reaching Duisburg in Germany, it swings north to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From Rotterdam, the path runs south to Venice, Italy — where it meets up with the equally ambitious Maritime Silk Road.
The Maritime Silk Road will begin in Quanzhou in Fujian province, and also hit Guangzhou (Guangdong pronvince), Beihai (Guangxi), and Haikou (Hainan) before heading south to the Malacca Strait. From Kuala Lumpur, the Maritime Silk Road heads to Kolkata, India then crosses the rest of the Indian Ocean to Nairobi, Kenya (the Xinhua map does not include a stop in Sri Lanka, despite indications in February that the island country would be a part of the Maritime Silk Road). From Nairobi, the Maritime Silk Road goes north around the Horn of Africa and moves through the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, with a stop in Athens before meeting the land-based Silk Road in Venice.
The maps of the two Silk Roads drive home the enormous scale of the project: the Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road combined will create a massive loop linking three continents. If any single image conveys China’s ambitions to reclaim its place as the “Middle Kingdom,” linked to the world by trade and cultural exchanges, the Xinhua map is it. Even the name of the project, the Silk Road, is inextricably linked to China’s past as a source of goods and information for the rest of the world.
China’s economic vision is no less expansive than the geographic vision. According to the Xinhua article, the Silk Road will bring “new opportunities and a new future to China and every country along the road that is seeking to develop.” The article envisions an “economic cooperation area” that stretches from the Western Pacific to the Baltic Sea.
Despite this expansive goal, it’s not quite clear yet exactly what will tie together the disparate countries along the New Silk Road (both on land and at sea). China has discussed building up infrastructure (especially railways and ports) along the route, yet the Xinhua article specifically says the vision includes more than simply speedy transportation. China envisions a trade network where “goods are more abundant and trade is more high-end.” Beijing expects the economic contact along the Silk Roads to boost productivity in each country. As part of this vision, China has repeatedly stressed its economic compatibility with many of the countries along the planned route, and offered technological assistance to countries in key industries.
China also envisions the Silk Road as a region of “more capital convergence and currency integration” — in other words, a region where currency exchanges are fluid and easy. Xinhua notes that China’s currency, the renminbi, is becoming more widely used in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Yet the article does not call for the renminbi to become the Silk Road’s primary currency, but rather hopes that local currencies will be the dominant means of economic deals.
From economic exchanges, China hopes to gain closer cultural and political ties with each of the countries along the Silk Road — resulting in a new model of “mutual respect and mutual trust.” The Silk Road creates not just an economic trade route, but a community with “common interests, fate, and responsibilities.” The Silk Road represents China’s visions for an interdependent economic and political community stretching from East Asia to western Europe, and it’s clear that China believes its principles will be the guiding force in this new community. “China’s wisdom for building an open world economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day,” Xinhua wrote.
But for all the ambitious talk, details remain scarce on how this vision will be implemented. Will the land- and sea-based Silk Roads be limited to a string of bilateral agreements between China and individual countries, or between China and regional groups like the European Union and ASEAN? Is there a grander vision, such as a regional free trade zone incorporating all the Silk Road countries? Or will China be the tie that binds it all together, with no special agreements directly linking, say, Kazakhstan and Germany?
Turloch Mooney, Senior Editor, Global Ports | Oct 19, 2016 2:02PM EDT
The port of Chittagong, pictured, is working well above its designed capacity, but Bangladesh has no alternative maritime gateways.
The competition to develop much-needed modern port facilities in Bangladesh has intensified following the recent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the South Asian country.
Despite the clear need for a new port, and plenty of commercial incentives to build one, projects have been slow to materialize, as China, Japan, and India fight for the right to provide financing, and with that a ticket to build their influence in the country and in the region.
During the presidential visit, China committed $24 billion for the development of infrastructure projects, but no details were provided on investment in port infrastructure despite years of attempts on the part of Beijing to finance the construction of a new deep-sea port in the country.
After 10 years of average annual GDP growth of 6 percent, Bangladesh desperately needs modern port infrastructure.
More than 90 percent of its foreign trade and almost all of its containers are currently handled by Chittagong port. Essentially a river port, located 16 kilometers (10 miles) up the Karnaphuli River from the Bay of Bengal, Chittagong has a draft of only 9.2 meters (30 feet), requiring the costly practice of transferring cargo from large to small vessels before berthing and discharge.
More than half of the cargo berths at the port’s three main terminals, some of which date back to the 1940s, are in poor condition, and the port is regularly congested. In a circular to customers in July of this year, NYK Line said its vessels were forced to stay in port for up to six days, two times longer than normal, owing to what it described as unprecedented levels of congestion. As recently as the end of September port operations were again paralyzed, this time by a trucker strike that left 40,000 containers piled up in port yards stocked beyond their already limited capacity.
Bangladesh’s export sector is expected to eclipse $50 billion in value by 2021 as global demand for its ready-made woven and knitted garments, frozen foods, jute, and leather continues to rise. Imports, too, are on the rise, particularly petroleum products, edible oils, cotton, and machinery and equipment.
A joint port development study completed last year by HPC Hamburg Port Consulting, an HHLA subsidiary, together with two other companies, forecasts container throughput at Chittagong will rise to 2.9 million twenty-foot-equivalent units by 2020 and 5.1 million TEUs by 2040.
Bulk throughput is expected to rise to 44 million tonnes (48.5 million tons) by 2023 and 73.3 million tonnes by 2043. The dry bulk segment is forecast to book average annual growth of 3.9 percent to 55.5 million tonnes by 2043, driven by high demand for cement clinker, reflecting the large potential of the construction sector.
Despite all this growth, Bangladesh's efforts to build new port infrastructure have continued to stumble.
The country is a major component of China’s Belt and Road maritime agenda and Beijing was originally due to build a new deep-sea port at Sonadia in the south of Bangladesh. However, in February of this year, the China Harbour Engineering Company project was scrapped by the Dhaka government following what is thought to have been intense political pressure from India and the United States, both of whom are concerned over China’s growing influence in the Indian Ocean region.
Another port, planned for Pyra on the northwest coast of the Bay of Bengal, and also originally to be a Chinese development, was subsequently turned into a joint project of several countries with significant involvement from India.
Japan has been making better headway recently. Earlier this year, a signing ceremony took place for a multi-billion dollar port and power plant project in Matarbari in the south of Bangladesh with majority funding from the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
That project will cost $4.6 billion, of which it will provide $3.4 billion, and includes development of two 600 MW, coal-fired power plants and 18-meter draft port capable of handling vessels up to 80,000 deadweight tonnes, according to the Japanese development agency.
At the same time, HHLA of Hamburg said it has been selected by the Chittagong Port Authority to carry out a feasibility study for the “Bay Terminal” to be built on the Patenga coast, close to the existing Chittagong port. The containers-focused facility would have a maximum draft of 14 meters, allowing larger vessels to call at Chittagong for the first time, and would be part-funded by the Asian Development Bank.
Whether or not the Bay Terminal project materializes remains to be seen, but for now Bangladesh’s quest for modern port facilities to support its trade potential continues, as does the risk of political delays due to its geopolitical importance.
Contact Turloch Mooney at turloch.mooney@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on Twitter: @TurlochMooney.
Iran, China seal New Silk Road deal
Mon Oct 31, 2016 7:28P
Iran and China have finalized an agreement which allows Chinese traders to use the Iranian territory for exports to Europe as envisaged in an ambitious plan by Beijing named the New Silk Road initiative.
Iran says it has finalized a cooperation agreement with China that would allow Chinese traders to use the Iranian territory for exports to Europe.
The agreement was signed between customs officials of Iran and China. It is expected to take an ambitious plan by China to revive the ancient Silk Road one step closer to reality, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.
Preparations are currently being made to implement the agreement in the new future, the news agency added. Accordingly, Chinese goods will be shipped to Iran’s southern ports and will be thereon transited to Europe by land. The route that has been envisaged for the scheme will be much shorter that the ancient Silk Road, IRNA added.
The preliminaries for the project were agreed on during a state visit to Tehran by China’s President Xi Jinping in January.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the new "Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Maritime Silk Road" initiative to connect stronger logistics networks with Asia, Africa and Europe by building more roads, railways and airports.
Beijing has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with $100 billion in capital and the New Silk Road Fund with a capital of $40 billion to fund major infrastructure projects in the region, including those pertaining to the development of the New Silk Road.
Iran is strategically-located in the Middle East, sharing land borders with 15 nations, and sea channels on its northern and southwestern coasts. China has already made it clear that it sees Iran as a country that can play a crucial role in its New Silk Road initiative given its access to extensive delivery routes connecting to the Middle East and Eurasia.
Where Is China's Silk Road Actually Going?
At the Boao Forum, China provided the clearest overview yet of its ambitious Silk Road plans.
By Shannon Tiezzi
March 30, 2015
The Boao Forum for Asia, an annual economic dialogue held in China’s Hainan Province, was an especially high-profile meeting this year; Chinese President Xi Jinping himself delivered the keynote address. The reason for the special emphasis was clear: Beijing selected the Boao Forum as the venue to deliver the first in-depth explanation of China’s vision for the Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, collectively known as the “Belt and Road.”
During the Boao Forum, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), in conjunction with China’s Foreign Ministry and Commerce Ministry, issued an action plan for the Belt and Road. Xinhua provided an English-language translation of the document. Beijing is not shy about its ambitions for the project — “The plan is expected to change the world political and economic landscape through development of countries along the routes, most of which are eager for fresh growth,” Xinhua wrote. Beijing hopes that annual trade volume between China and “Belt and Road” countries will “surpass 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars in a decade or so,” Xi said.
The plan is geographically ambitious as well, envisioning the Belt and Road as encompassing Asia, Africa, and Europe and their near seas. The land route “focuses on bringing together China, Central Asia, Russia and Europe,” the document noted. The Silk Road is envisioned as “a new Eurasian Land Bridge” created by transportation routes, with “core cites” as links in the chain. There were less details on the maritime route, though the plan noted there would be two legs: one linking China to the Indian Ocean via the South China Sea and the other traveling through the South China Sea to the South Pacific. There was no list of concrete projects associated with the Belt and Road, but China held up the $23 billion worth of deals just signed with Kazakhstanas a model for other countries.
The document laid out the basic goals of the Belt and Road:
“It is aimed at promoting orderly and free flow of economic factors, highly efficient allocation of resources and deep integration of markets; encouraging the countries along the Belt and Road to achieve economic policy coordination and carry out broader and more in-depth regional cooperation of higher standards; and jointly creating an open, inclusive and balanced regional economic cooperation architecture that benefits all.”
The Belt and Road are often understood primarily as infrastructure projects. Indeed, that will be the main focus in the early stages, as Chinese leaders have repeatedly spoken of infrastructure as a “bottleneck” preventing further economic cooperation. But there’s more to the Belt and Road than simply the construction of roads, railways, and ports. Even on the infrastructure front, China’s vision to “form an infrastructure network connecting all sub-regions in Asia, and between Asia, Europe and Africa” includes energy and communications infrastructure as well an transportation.
Infrastructure construction is the easy part, as many countries along the planned route are hungry for investment and funding. China’s more ambitious goal is to have countries coordinate their policies to ensure that each individual country’s economic development plan feeds into a larger regional vision. That includes free trade areas, both bilaterally and regionally, as well as broad financial integration. On the financial front, Beijing wants expanded bilateral currency swap deals. Funding for the Belt and Road projects will be carried out through the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China’s own Silk Road Fund, and eventually through a hoped-for financing mechanism administered by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The Belt and Road has political overtones as well, with China using the project as a vehicle to promote its own key foreign policy tenets, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. The Five Principles are “mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Those principles, laid out in a 1954 treaty with India and Myanmar, celebrated their official 60th anniversary last July.
China envisions the Five Principles as the basis for a uniquely Asian regional foreign policy, one that frowns upon Western-style “interference” in other countries over human rights concerns. Xi was also quite clear in his remarks that the Asian security architecture should leave behind the “Cold War mentality” to explore “new security concepts” — echoing China’s previous calls for a shift away from the U.S.-led alliance structure that currently lynchpins regional security.
China set up a leading group to oversee implementation of the Belt and Road, making it clear that this initiative is a political priority. “Construction of the belt and road is a huge and systematic job … that calls for strengthened leadership and coordination of domestic and foreign affairs,” the leading group said in a statement announcing its formation.
As part of the preparation for the Belt and Road, China will work with other countries “so that they gain a better understanding of the initiative,” Xinhua said. That may be a tacit acknowledgement that some other countries are wary that the Belt and Road is China’s attempt to assert regional hegemony. Xi tried to dispel these fears in his Boao speech, promising that China will not dominate the plan. The Belt and Road “will be a real chorus comprising all countries along the routes, not a solo for China itself,” Xi said.
12:00 AM, October 16, 2016 / LAST MODIFIED: 11:03 AM, October 16, 2016
Silk Road in South Asia: Designed to be a game changer?
Shakhawat Liton
Building new Silk Road trade routes -- an ambitious project masterminded by Chinese President Xi Jinping -- appears a game changer in South Asia's regional politics.
During his landmark visit, Dhaka agreed to give full support to his initiative. Earlier, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, three Saarc members, agreed to the plan.
In 2014-15, the Chinese leader visited India and the three countries, and China inked deals worth billions of dollars for development projects in those countries. At the time, Beijing signed deals worth $46 billion with Pakistan, $20 billion with India, $1.4 billion with Sri Lanka and worth $500 million with the Maldives.
India, however, still remains hesitant about joining the bandwagon as many of its policymakers think that China wants to increase its influence in the region through this initiative.
"A rising China has steadily used its economic and military clout to woo Indian's neighbours and incorporate them in its ambitious One Belt, One Road project," said Pinak Ranjan Chakroborty, a former Indian diplomat.
Read: Bangladesh-China Joint Statement
Pinak, a distinguished fellow of Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), in an article styled "China-Bangladesh bonhomie: India needs to restrategise as the Dragon woos this neighbour" wrote about Bangladesh-China's agreement to jointly advance the idea of building new Silk Road under One Belt, One Road Initiative.
"It is an essential component of China's concerted move to woo India's neighbours and drive a wedge between them," he wrote in his article posted on CatchNews on Friday.
After his two-day state visit, Xi left Dhaka yesterday morning for Goa, India, to attend BRICS Summit.
Apart from signing government-to-government deals worth $24.45 billion during his visit, Dhaka and Beijing upgraded their relations to strategic partnership. In addition, private Chinese companies pledged $13.6 billion in investment in Bangladesh.
"Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed BRICS leaders who began arriving in Goa on the eve of the Summit, China threw in the usual hoopla with President Xi Jinping making a strategic stopover in Bangladesh," said The Tribune, an English daily in India, yesterday.
"Xi's Dhaka visit is strategically placed since Bangladesh has traditionally been a close ally of India and for China, it is another nation in the South Asian region where it wants a bigger footprint," it said.
Last year, Modi had announced a $2 billion credit line during his visit to Dhaka, but Chinese generosity has dwarfed that, the report added.
"His [Xi] trip comes at a time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading efforts to boost ties with neighbouring countries, from Sri Lanka to Nepal, by offering them a share of India's fast-growing economy," said a Reuters report published in the Times of India on Friday.
The Chinese investment with the aim of building Silk Road has empowered Pakistan to counter Indian's offensive against it.
After the Uri attack in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed and for which India blamed Pakistan, India has been pursuing a strategy to isolate Pakistan globally and also in the South Asian region.
It has been successful as most Saarc members last month refused to attend Saarc summit scheduled for November in Islamabad. After India declined to attend the summit, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka came up with the same decision, citing a lack of atmosphere conducive to join the summit. Their pulling out was viewed as a significant step in that direction for the grouping.
Since then, India has moved to build a new sub-regional group with members of the Saarc, excluding Pakistan. It has planned to strengthen BIMSTEC, a regional group of countries in South Asia and South East Asia.
At the invitation of the Indian PM, heads of the states and governments of other Saarc member countries are attending a BRICS regional outreach. Pakistan has not been invited by India, host of the summit.
BRICS has a tradition of having an outreach event with the region where the host country is located. This time, instead of the Saarc countries, which includes Pakistan, Delhi has decided to invite the BIMSTEC countries -- Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.
Pakistan did not remain silent. Islamabad is exploring the possibility of creating a greater South Asian economic alliance to counter India's controlling hold on the Saarc, said a report in the Dawn, a leading English newspaper of Pakistan.
“A greater South Asia is already emerging,” said Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed. “This greater South Asia includes China, Iran and the neighbouring Central Asian republics,” said the Dawn report, quoting the Pakistani senator who was visiting Washington last week.
In this initiative, Pakistan's strength is the good relation with China and huge Chinese investment deals worth $46 billion inked between the two countries during Xi Jinping's visit to Islamabad last year to build China-Pakistan economic corridor.
China's relations with Pakistan may also frustrate India's move to use BRICS summit to rebuke Pakistan.
"While BRICS is an economic forum, India will use this opportunity to try to push forward its own agenda on terror. Sources say India will try to convince each nation to issue statements condemning terror in an effort to globally isolate Pakistan. But China is expected to play the usual spoiler," said The Tribune in a report yesterday.
Russia also may not agree with such an Indian move as Moscow has evinced interest in selling fighter jets and other military hardware to Islamabad. Last month, Russia and Pakistan had conducted military exercise.
The Chinese leader's visit to Dhaka has been viewed by the Indian media as significant.
China may put renewed pressure on India to join its idea for building the Silk Road trade routes during the BRICS summit as most of India's neighbours in South Asia are falling in line with the Chinese ambitious initiative, according to a leading English daily of India.
"The Chinese president will surely take the opportunity of his interactions during the BRICS summit to impress upon India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi that by not joining the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative], New Delhi is missing out an opportunity for economic development," said the Hindustan Times yesterday.
The Chinese leader's visit and subsequently upgraded ties between the two countries would not only boost the role of Bangladesh in the region, but also give it an edge in BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach summit, said China.org.cn, an official web portal of China.
"When Shiekh Hasina comes to Goa, fortified by the new partnership with China, she would be setting Bangladesh on a bold, new course with a clear-cut strategy for balancing relations between neighbours (meaning India) and global powers (read, China)," said the web portal in the article styled "Xi creates webs en route to BRICS."
Nepal, a Saarc member, seems willing to join Xi's ambitious project.
A few months back, the Nepalese government was considered as close to China. But the new government is known close to India. Following the change in the political landscape, Xi Jinping has delayed his visit to Nepal.
Now, Nepalese foreign experts recommend the Nepalese government to use the BRICS Summit to ensure Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit, said a report by The Himalayan, an English daily of Nepal, on Thursday.
Former foreign secretary Madhu Raman Acharya said Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal should talk about the purported visit while he would meet the Chinese head of the state in India, said the report.
In the last three years, Xi visited many countries along the ancient Silk Route, and Beijing signed many deals with the countries, promising to invest billions of dollars in different sectors, particularly for infrastructure development.
Under the "One Belt, One Road" initiative comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the Asian giant is focusing on building a trade and infrastructure network for connecting Asian countries with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.
China, the world's largest exporter of goods since 2009, needs such a network to maintain its double digit growth by opening new markets for its consumer goods and to increase its dominance over the region in a peaceful manner in the name of trade, say analysts.
Beijing looks to garner international favour through a massive investment effort in Europe and Asia to surpass the US on the world stage, said Sputnik in a report on June 3.
In recent years, China planned infrastructure projects involving over $200 billion for construction, and $1 trillion for other projects are on the horizon, dwarfing US foreign investment by several orders of magnitude, said the Russian news outlet.
China's 'New Silk Road' Vision Revealed
A new series in Xinhua offers the clearest vision yet of China’s ambitious “New Silk Road.”
By Shannon Tiezzi
May 09, 2014
On Thursday, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency unveiled an ongoing feature entitled “New Silk Road, New Dreams.” The series promises to “dig up the historical and cultural meaning of the Silk Road, and spread awareness of China’s friendly policies towards neighboring countries.” The first article [Chinese] was titled “How Can the World Be Win-Win? China Is Answering the Question.”
The Xinhua series promises the clearest look so far at China’s vision for its Silk Road Economic Belt as well as the Maritime Silk Road. One of the most intriguing pieces released Thursday was a map showing China’s ambitious visions for the “New Silk Road” and “New Maritime Silk Road.” It’s the clearest vision to date of the scope of China’s Silk Road plan.
According to the map, the land-based “New Silk Road” will begin in Xi’an in central China before stretching west through Lanzhou (Gansu province), Urumqi (Xinjiang), and Khorgas (Xinjiang), which is near the border with Kazakhstan. The Silk Road then runs southwest from Central Asia to northern Iran before swinging west through Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. From Istanbul, the Silk Road crosses the Bosporus Strait and heads northwest through Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Reaching Duisburg in Germany, it swings north to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From Rotterdam, the path runs south to Venice, Italy — where it meets up with the equally ambitious Maritime Silk Road.
The Maritime Silk Road will begin in Quanzhou in Fujian province, and also hit Guangzhou (Guangdong pronvince), Beihai (Guangxi), and Haikou (Hainan) before heading south to the Malacca Strait. From Kuala Lumpur, the Maritime Silk Road heads to Kolkata, India then crosses the rest of the Indian Ocean to Nairobi, Kenya (the Xinhua map does not include a stop in Sri Lanka, despite indications in February that the island country would be a part of the Maritime Silk Road). From Nairobi, the Maritime Silk Road goes north around the Horn of Africa and moves through the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, with a stop in Athens before meeting the land-based Silk Road in Venice.
The maps of the two Silk Roads drive home the enormous scale of the project: the Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road combined will create a massive loop linking three continents. If any single image conveys China’s ambitions to reclaim its place as the “Middle Kingdom,” linked to the world by trade and cultural exchanges, the Xinhua map is it. Even the name of the project, the Silk Road, is inextricably linked to China’s past as a source of goods and information for the rest of the world.
China’s economic vision is no less expansive than the geographic vision. According to the Xinhua article, the Silk Road will bring “new opportunities and a new future to China and every country along the road that is seeking to develop.” The article envisions an “economic cooperation area” that stretches from the Western Pacific to the Baltic Sea.
Despite this expansive goal, it’s not quite clear yet exactly what will tie together the disparate countries along the New Silk Road (both on land and at sea). China has discussed building up infrastructure (especially railways and ports) along the route, yet the Xinhua article specifically says the vision includes more than simply speedy transportation. China envisions a trade network where “goods are more abundant and trade is more high-end.” Beijing expects the economic contact along the Silk Roads to boost productivity in each country. As part of this vision, China has repeatedly stressed its economic compatibility with many of the countries along the planned route, and offered technological assistance to countries in key industries.
China also envisions the Silk Road as a region of “more capital convergence and currency integration” — in other words, a region where currency exchanges are fluid and easy. Xinhua notes that China’s currency, the renminbi, is becoming more widely used in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Thailand. Yet the article does not call for the renminbi to become the Silk Road’s primary currency, but rather hopes that local currencies will be the dominant means of economic deals.
From economic exchanges, China hopes to gain closer cultural and political ties with each of the countries along the Silk Road — resulting in a new model of “mutual respect and mutual trust.” The Silk Road creates not just an economic trade route, but a community with “common interests, fate, and responsibilities.” The Silk Road represents China’s visions for an interdependent economic and political community stretching from East Asia to western Europe, and it’s clear that China believes its principles will be the guiding force in this new community. “China’s wisdom for building an open world economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day,” Xinhua wrote.
But for all the ambitious talk, details remain scarce on how this vision will be implemented. Will the land- and sea-based Silk Roads be limited to a string of bilateral agreements between China and individual countries, or between China and regional groups like the European Union and ASEAN? Is there a grander vision, such as a regional free trade zone incorporating all the Silk Road countries? Or will China be the tie that binds it all together, with no special agreements directly linking, say, Kazakhstan and Germany?
Banglar Bir
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I'm yet to see a comprehensive map of OBOR that figures all the countries projected to be part of it, both on the land and maritime routes...
