AGARTALA / DHAKA, August 6 (TIWN): First consignment of food grains for Tripura has reached the Ashuganj river port in Bangladesh, food minister Bhanulal Saha told reporters in Agartala.Saha said the consignment will enter the state through the Akhaura integrated check post (ICP) by road within the next 2-3 days.Tripura is now bringing in 10000 MT of foodgrains through the Chittagong-Asuganj route per month.This is a pilot project to be regularised if it works time and cost wise.

 It has taken the consignment exactly a month to reach Asuganj from Vizag in Andhra Pradesh, from where it started on July 3. 

“The first consignment of 5000 MT of rice reached Ashuganj port  today afternoon and it will be transported to our state within August 8. We thank Bangladesh for allowing us to use their ports and roads and not charging anything for it ,” minister Saha said.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) will ship 10,000 MT of rice to Tripura from its Vishakhapatnam silo via the Ashuganj port in the neighbouring country under the “Indo-Bangladesh protocol route”.

India has begun using a new trade route via a Bangladeshi port as well as land terrain to ship food grains to the North-east, as the NDA government steps up ties with the neighbour after foreign minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent successful visit to Dhaka, says bdnews24.com.

This route becomes important for Tripura as for the next two years, there will be a major bottleneck on the railway track from Lumding to Djharmanagar due to work on broad guage conversion.  .

This is  the lone train route for transporting food grains other than the lone national highway 44 that connects Tripura to mainland India.

“Bangladesh has been kind enough to move the Indian food grains to be transported through sea, river and its roads. Without their co-operation, it would not have been possible,” said B Tayeng, general manager of FCI northeast region.

“We are immediately trying for this route and going to reassess our difficulties after completion of the pilot project. We shall calculate the cost and time differences in transporting food grains on conventional land routes from Punjab to the northeast region by train and through the non-convention route through Bangladesh from Andhra Pradesh.”