Kathmandu, 30 June: The World Bank has approved $1.03 billion of financing to help improve regional trade in Nepal and Bangladesh by reducing trade and transport costs and transit time along the regional corridors.
The Accelerating Transport and Trade Connectivity in Eastern South Asia (ACCESS) Program Phase 1 will help the respective governments address the key barriers to regional trade ─ manual and paper-based trade processes, inadequate transport and trade infrastructure, and restrictive trade and transport regulations and processes, according to a media release on Wednesday.
The Phase 1 of the programme will help replace lengthy manual and paper-based trade processes with digitised automated solutions in Bangladesh and Nepal. The automation will enable faster border crossing times and install electronic tracking of truck entry and exit, electronic queuing, and smart parking, said the World Bank release.
The programme will also help improve selected road corridors and upgrade key land ports and custom infrastructure, while ensuring green and climate-resilient construction. This will help the integration of landlocked Nepal and Bhutan with the gateway countries of Bangladesh and India, it added.
“Regional trade offers enormous untapped potential for the countries of South Asia. Today, regional trade accounts for only 5.0 per cent of South Asia’s total trade, while in East Asia it accounts for 50 per cent,” Hartwig Schafer, World Bank Vice President for South Asia was quoted in the release.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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