Chattogram’s Busiest Box Terminal Changes Hands, Not Owners
The Dubai-based operator will manage the terminal and overflow yard while Chattogram Port Authority retains ownership, regulatory control and a majority revenue share.
Dhaka — The quay that moves nearly half of Chattogram's containers will be run by DP World for the next 15 years. The Chattogram Port Authority and the Dubai operator signed the concession on Thursday for the New Mooring Container Terminal and its overflow yard. The land, the core assets and the regulator's last word stay with the port authority. What changes is who maintains the cranes, sets the working pace and pays for the upgrade.
Rear Admiral S.M. Moniruzzaman signed for the port. Essa Kazim, DP World's chairman, signed for the operator, at the Invest Bangladesh auditorium. Shipping Minister Sheikh Rabiul Alam and State Minister Md Rajib Ahsan were there, with UAE ambassador Abdulla Ali Al Hamoudi and Invest Bangladesh chairman Ashik Chowdhury. The same evening Prime Minister Tarique Rahman asked the DP World team to look beyond this terminal, toward free-trade zones and rail-linked inland container depots. The delegation said it was interested. That is a conversation, not a second contract.
The terminal is not a side berth. Last fiscal year NCT handled about 13.85 lakh TEUs, roughly 44 percent of the port's boxes. Under the deal DP World must guarantee at least 1.23 million TEUs a year, a floor that can fall to 1 million once another terminal opens. Work is supposed to start within six months of signing. Full operations are expected within two years. Until then the port still owns the failure if ships wait.
The money is layered. DP World pays about Tk 600 crore up front: a quarter on signature, the rest before it takes the operation. It has also committed more than Tk 1,000 crore over the first 10 years for equipment, systems and yard works. A wider package cited around the signing put investment and related commitments near $150 million, of which about $90 million is equipment and technology. In return the port authority keeps a revenue share reported at about 67 percent of each TEU's terminal revenue, plus a fixed annual fee of about Tk 10 crore. At an assumed $140 to $150 a box, that share is roughly $93 to $100.
An earlier outline of the same deal described the royalty band as 40 to 67 percent, moving with average revenue. The published cut is the number shippers will test against invoices.
The political bet is speed. Chattogram's congestion has been a tax on garments, on import lead times and on the claim that Bangladesh can handle more than it ships today. A global operator with a volume floor and its own capital is meant to shorten that tax without a sale of the harbour. The risk sits in the small print the ceremony did not read out: how tariffs move, who pays if the 1.23 million TEU floor is missed, and what happens to the labour and contractor roster when a foreign operator sets the shift pattern. Ownership remaining public answers one objection. It does not answer the dwell-time chart. That chart, six months from now, is the only audit that matters.