A team of Container Corporation of India would visit Bangladesh next month to facilitate a rail link to start a container service for faster trade between India and Bangladesh.
"In the absence of a working rail link via Benapole in West Bengal, presently the export to Bangladesh is from the Haldia port to Chittagong port via sea route," A K Kohli, managing director, Concor, told reporters in Nagpur on Wednesday.
Earlier, the traffic to Bangladesh used to be via Singapore which was not only time consuming but expensive too, he said, adding the rail link via Benapole would reduce both cost and time.
A team of Bangladesh officials had visited the country recently and held discussions with Concor to explore the early start of a container service to Bangladesh, he said.
On Concor's overall performance, Kohli said it did extremely well in the first quarter, recording a growth of 15 per cent.
Noting that the present capacity of Tughalakabad has saturated, Kohli said a new Bangladesh depot would be operational soon at Greater Noida, which is coming up about 40 km from the present Tughalakabad inland container depot on nearly 120 hectares of land.
"It would be the world's biggest inland container depot. The warehouse would be inaugurated on August 15 followed by a rail link in December. The location is scientifically designed and developed," he said.
