Connectivity Infrastructure

Bangladesh

Grant & Concessional Finance

• Bharat has extended 3 Lines of Credits (LOC) to Bangladesh in the last 8 years amounting to around US$ 8 billion for development of infrastructure in various sectors including roads, railways, shipping and ports. In addition to LOCs, the Government of India has also been providing grant assistance to Bangladesh for various infrastructure projects including, construction of Akhaura-Agartala rail link, dredging of inland waterways in Bangladesh and construction of India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline.
• The first Line of Credit of US$ 1 billion was extended to Bangladesh in 2010 for developing infrastructure projects, mainly in fields of railways and public transport. Government of India had subsequently converted US$ 200 million out of the US$ 1 billion LoC as grant assistance in June 2012 and also increased the corpus to US$ 862 million.
• A second LoC of USD 2 billion was announced during the visit of PM Narendra Modi to Bangladesh in June 2015. Under the 2nd LoC, 16 projects including mainly in the fields of Power, Railways, Road and Transport, Health and Technical Education etc had been identified and are at different stages of implementation. 
• The third LoC of US $ 4.5 billion to Bangladesh was announced in April 2017 during the visit of Prime Minister of Bangladesh to Bharat. Under the 3rd LoC, 15 projects in the fields of Power, Railways, Road and Transport, Health and Technical Education, Imperial Tobacco Company of India Limited (ITC), Shipping and Solar based connectivity etc had been identified and are at different stages of approvals and implementation.
• In yet another first, Bharat operated ‘Oxygen Express’ trains to transport Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) in railway containers, as part of commercial purchases made by Bangladesh. 20 such trains operated during the second wave of Covid-19.