This is a summary of an opinion article by an outside author. The views are the author’s, not Maritime News BD’s.
In The Daily Star on 20 November 2025, Ahamedul Karim Chowdhury, a former head of the Pangaon Inland Container Terminal and Kamalapur ICD under the Chittagong Port Authority, calls the 22-year concession to MSC’s logistics arm Medlog “a second chance” for the terminal, but urges cautious optimism.
He attributes Pangaon’s underperformance, at times below 20 per cent of its 116,000 TEU design capacity, to operational bottlenecks, inconsistent scheduling, weak multimodal links and policy gaps. He says government action is needed on fixed berthing windows at Chattogram, scheduled dredging, completing Dhaka’s Middle Circular Road and digitising customs and port processes. He notes that the Buriganga-Shitalakshya corridor’s draft of about four metres blocks typical 350-TEU feeders, and argues foreign involvement should be managed through transparency, tariff oversight and performance audits.
Source
- The Daily Star (opinion): “A second chance for Pangaon, but can it unlock its potential?” (20 November 2025)
File photo: an earlier ministerial visit to Pangaon port, 2017. Photo: Press Information Department / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This article is a summary prepared by Maritime News BD from the report(s) listed above; it was not independently reported by Maritime News BD.
