The Challenges and Prospects of Inland Waterway Transportation System of Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is crisscrossed by rivers and inland waterways have been playing a significant role to the transportation of goods. For nation’s economic prospects it is very important to develop the inland waterways transportation systems in Bangladesh. But inland waterways in Bangladesh are facing challenges due to many problems in spite of having good prospects. Therefore, the objective of the study is to examine the present IWT systems, its challenges and how it can contribute more than others transportation systems to our national economy. this paper is mainly based on secondary data. The data is collected from journal papers, internet, newspaper, books, and articles. Data is also gathered from different maritime authority’s website. The research findings indicate that the Bangladeshi inland waterways have huge prospects, but lack of knowledge gap of current condition of inland navigability, not conducting hydrographic survey after 1989, lack of poor management, inadequate inland port facilities, low quality vessel and poor inland connectivity are the reasons for all of this problem. Inland waterways transports are environmentally friendly than others transportation systems and many local business person, exporter, importer will be benefited by using IWT. But authority should have to utilize the inland water ways in a right manner. Adequate the depth and air draft should have to be maintained and the inland port facilities improvement and infrastructure development are necessary for IWT.