Bangladesh Railway is laying the groundwork to bring every terminal at Chattogram Port into an integrated railroad network, part of the logistics buildout the country needs to get anywhere near its goal to export $100 billion in goods by 2030.
With the initiative, the railway aims to shift freight off the congested road corridor and onto rail, which the country has called for in its national logistics policy. According to project officials, the port lacks adequate rail links with all five of its terminals, including those under construction.
The railway will implement the World Bank-financed preparatory project, which funds studies and designs rather than construction. An executive committee of the country’s National Economic Council approved the 93.5 crore taka (roughly $7.6 million) project, with completion slated for March 2027, according to state news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.
Any construction that follows will be part of separate investment projects.
The studies cover areas within the Dhaka-Chattogram freight corridor starting at Faujdarhat, the junction where trains leave the main line for the port, and run through the port’s rail yard. The terminals covered include the port’s general cargo berth and three container terminals, Chittagong, Patenga and New Mooring, as well as the Laldia and Bay terminals that are both currently in development.
Currently, rail’s share of import-export container traffic throughout the country has fallen below 4 percent from nearly 10 percent, with 16 locomotives needed daily for freight against three to five available, according to Bangladeshi business publication Bonik Barta.
The sole inland container depot that Dhaka’s garment belt relies on by rail remains the weak point. Kamalapur is part of a wider network of depots, known as ICDs, where containers are cleared and stored away from the seaport, and it handles around 50,000 20-foot equivalents (TEUs) per year.
The replacement has been planned for nearly two decades without reaching construction. First proposed in 2007, the Dhirashram depot is designed to handle 432,000 TEUs annually, more than eight times Kamalapur’s volume. Dhirashram would take over as the capital’s rail container terminal, freeing up the Kamalapur site for a planned multimodal transport hub. But a series of delays—including a 10-year feasibility study, private partners who withdrew from the plans and a government fight over the site—has resulted in no buildout.
Inside Chattogram Port, the existing railroad track is the first problem. The lines are metre-gauge, a narrower standard than the broad gauge the railway plans to use for future freight. According to railway officials, the two main container terminals have only limited rail access.
A fix for the gauge mismatch is already underway on the main line into the city. Bangladesh Railway is converting the 131.2-kilometer (82-mile) Laksam-Chattogram line to dual gauge, fitting the track so both narrow- and broad-gauge trains can run on it, under a 16,955 crore taka (roughly $1.4 billion) project running to June 2032, according to a railway ministry proposal reported by The Business Standard.
Bangladesh is looking to address the same concerns that have captivated its top apparel exporting competition. In Vietnam, Maersk’s APM Terminals and Hateco agreed to study a rail network in the northern part of the country, anchored by a cargo-handling center at Hai Phong and three other sites tying industrial parks and manufacturing centers to the nation’s ports.
For Bangladesh, the south Asian nation has a long way to go to reach its $100 billion export target. The country shipped out $48 billion in the 2025-26 fiscal year, which ended in June. But that number saw a decline of 0.6 percent from the year prior, with its chief export sector, ready-made garments (RMGs), falling 1.6 percent to $38.7 billion. The country has fared better more recently, with exports rising 8.5 percent in September to $3.9 billion while outbound RMG shipments rose 8.6 percent to $3.1 billion.
Fortifying the railroad system at Chattogram Port could help Bangladesh come closer to meeting the lofty export target. The port is central to the country’s global trade capabilities, handling more than 90 percent of the country’s export-import activity and containerized cargo.
But repeated disruptions, whether it be labor, weather or structural, have befallen the gateway, which ranks 364th out of 400 ports measured by the World Bank’s 2025 Container Port Performance Index.
Citing World Bank data during a Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry roundtable in May, M Masrur Reaz, chairman of think tank Policy Exchange Bangladesh, said trimming a day of port dwell time could lift exports by 7.4 percent. On a wider scale, the data indicated that cutting logistics costs by 25 percent could boost exports by 20 percent.
Under Bangladesh’s national logistics policy established in 2025, the government established a wider goal to turn the country “into a regional trade and logistics hub by 2050.” The policy directs that rail connections be established with all seaports, land ports, economic zones and inland container depots, with a target of lifting rail’s share of freight to 20 percent.
Last month, the Prime Minister’s Office issued notifications to form five working groups to put the policy into action, in line with decisions of the National Logistics Development and Coordination Committee. The groups cover trade facilitation, logistics digitalization, investment, skills development and multimodal logistics infrastructure.