Infrastructures cost world’s highest in Bangladesh

Cost of big infrastructure projects in Bangladesh is much higher than that in other Asian, European countries and even in the USA eroding much of the economic benefits the country is looking for, as per a World Bank (WB) report.
Experts find no logical cause behind such high cost other than corruption in manipulating higher project cost and inefficiency that delays their implementation to add to more cost.  
Looking at big highway projects in Bangladesh, the cost estimates suggest it is far higher   than the neighboring countries. WB also presented a comparison on Bangladesh infrastructure spending in the past singularly pointing out that the country is spending the highest on big projects often marred with undue cost and time over-run. Pervasive corruption is mainly blamed for high exorbitant cost.  
Such corruption may have occurred from bidding to unsolicited award of contracts to parties   closer to politically powerful quarters or on pressure from big donors.   
"Bangladesh's spending for each kilometre of track is higher than in China and India," said WB lead economist in its Dhaka Office Dr Zahid Hussain. He blames absence of competition in the bidding process for high amount of corruption. "The cost becomes higher when there is no competition in the tender process. This is part of corruption. Acquisition of lands also increases cost as parties manipulate the price," said Hussain.
The WB finding shows Bangladesh spent $6.6 million on each kilometre of road as it expanded Rangpur-Hatikumrul highway to four lanes. It showed each kilometre of expansion work on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway cost $7 million. For Dhaka-Mawa, it was $11.9 million per kilometre and $2.5 million for the Dhaka-Chittagong highway. The expansion work of Dhaka-Mymensingh highway cost $2.5 million per kilometre.
But in India, constructing of one kilometre of a four-lane road cost $1.1 million to $1.3 million, including land acquisition. In China, the figure was $1.3 million to $1.6 million. Some other comparison shows India spends Rs 12 crore for construction of one kilometer railway line while it is Rs 15 for Pakistan. But Bangladesh is spending Tk 28.46 crore for building / expansion of railway line.
     For Europe, the cost for each kilometre of four-lane road was $3.5 million, while the conversion of a two-lane road to four was $2.5 million. "The figures obtained from 2013 survey but the picture is still relevant. It shows building a road in New York is even less costly than in Bangladesh
Dr Debapriya Bhattachariya of the Center for Policy Dialogue's (CPD) said: "We know how much money is spent in constructing one km road in Bangladesh, it is highly exorbitant." It is much more than building a road in New York.  
He said: "What bothers much is that we are not only paying high cost of construction, the quality of the construction is also worse." He said most project costs is running high as implementation can't be completed in time.
The cost of Moghbazar flyover increased manifolds as allocations were made time and again while it took two years more for completion. Management inefficiency and willful delay in completing projects to claim extra cost were mainly blamed. It happens in many other projects.  
Dr Shamsul Haque, member of Planning Commission said 10 big projects now at various stage of implementation need to be completed soon. Otyerwise the cost over-run will eat up major benefit while their quick implementation is important to achieve 10 percent GDP growth.
Much of the budgetary resources are now going to implerment those projects like Padma Bridge, Rooppur Neuclerar Projects and so on. Only their quick implementation can relieve the nation from their cost burden, he said.