The cargo village at the HSIA or Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is failing to accommodate rising volume of export-bound goods thereby piling up losses on garment exporters who are struggling to ship their products on time even as the Adviser to the Prime on private industry and investment, Salman F. Rahman recently paid a surprise visit to HSIA to take stock of things personally.
Media reports claimed HSIA’s cargo village has a daily storage capacity of 400 tonnes of dry cargo, which is, reportedly, significantly lower than 1,200 tonnes arriving at HSIA to be shipped through national and international airlines even as around 800 tonnes of goods are, reportedly, exported through the air routes every day and, due to the space crisis, exporters are now forced to store goods outside the village, which are left unattended, amidst reports of rising thefts while also being exposed to rain and sun.
Meanwhile, speaking to the media, Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, M. Mafidur Rahman, reportedly, maintained that a separate cargo village was under construction at the HSIA, having 63,000 square metres of areas for storing export-bound and imported cargoes and went on to state, “…by the end of 2025, the new cargo village will go into operations.”
With this expansion, HSIA’s annual cargo handling capacity will, reportedly, go up to 500,000 tonnes from the current 200,000.
It may be mentioned here that during his recent visit, Salman F. Rahman expressed his dissatisfaction with the airport authorities over their failure in fixing the damaged Explosive Detection System (EDS) used during the export of goods by air even as he, reportedly, maintained that major European buyers, especially C&A, Inditex Group and H&M, had complained of not getting their products on time and added domestic traders had also made the same complaint, which is why he had decided to visit the cargo village himself.
