Handing NCT to a Foreign Operator Would Leave Bangladesh Without Policy Sovereignty, Dhaka University Teacher Moshahida Sultana Warns
Handing the operation of Chattogram Port's New Mooring Container Terminal, or NCT, to the UAE-based company DP World would leave Bangladesh without policy sovereignty, Dhaka University teacher Moshahida Sultana has warned. In her view, giving control of the operation of such strategically important infrastructure to a foreign operator would curtail the country's policy independence in the long term, with no way to recover it.
Moshahida Sultana is an associate professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Dhaka University, a researcher and activist. She is the publisher of the quarterly magazine “Sarbojon Katha” and is associated with the University Teachers Network. She spoke to Masud Rana of Ajker Patrika about whether Bangladesh's interests would be harmed by giving NCT to a foreign operator.
According to her, NCT is currently operating as a profitable terminal providing service beyond its capacity, where the scope for new infrastructure investment is also limited. In that situation, she questioned the rationale for handing it to a foreign operator.
The government argues that a foreign company will invest and modernise, corruption will fall and container handling time will come down. In Moshahida Sultana's view, without reducing corruption in Bangladesh Customs and without raising infrastructure capacity outside the port, handing the terminal to a foreign company is unlikely to solve these problems.
Rather, she says, foreign interests are being given more importance than national interests through this move. The government wants to free itself of the responsibility of building its own capacity. If problems remain unsolved in future, she believes, the government will be able to shift the blame onto the foreign operator and evade responsibility.
On promises and transparency, she said the public can be told many things and promises can be made easily. Speaking of transparency and protecting national interests is easy, but keeping those promises while control lies with another party is difficult in practice. Under a contract between a foreign institution and the government, if both fail in their respective duties they will blame each other, and neither will be able to take a strong position to compel the other. In such a situation, a lack of transparency will narrow the path of accountability to the public.
She alleged that the government has already raised tariffs in advance to guarantee the foreign operator's profit. Raising tariffs later would have raised questions about the foreign company's control, so tariffs were increased in a planned way beforehand, she said. Importers and exporters of the country are being harmed by this, she added.
She cited examples from other countries on risk. In Djibouti, although the country was the main shareholder of the Doraleh terminal, administrative and economic control passed to DP World through the intricacies of the contract. When the Djibouti government cancelled the agreement in the national interest in 2018, DP World went to international court. An international arbitration tribunal in London declared Djibouti's decision illegal and ruled in the foreign company's favour, leaving the country's state sovereignty in question.
Citing the Democratic Republic of Congo as another example, she said that amid internal political instability and corruption, control of that country's ports and mineral resources passed into the hands of foreign companies. As a result, the main route for exporting valuable natural resources and the lifeline of the national economy moved outside state control, and domestic agencies fell into a debt trap. The experience of both countries, in her view, shows that foreign control over sensitive infrastructure can become a long-term threat to a state's economic and strategic sovereignty.
She also warned about the risk in a war situation. If a foreign power wanted to use Bangladesh's port to attack its enemy, an enemy with whom Bangladesh itself has a relationship of dependency, Bangladesh might be forced to allow the port's use even at the cost of its own interests. How the port would then be used, and who would control how much of it, would become major questions. In her words, Bangladesh would then have no policy sovereignty and the country would suffer insecurity.
She offered a different explanation for delays in cargo release and for corruption. In her view, delays are caused by procrastination in Customs, which forces containers to lie in the yard for long periods. Businesspeople who face losses because of that congestion try to speed up the process by paying extra money to various parties. Without the congestion, she argued, the opportunity for corruption would not arise in the first place. So without asking why corruption happens, and keeping the system the same, thinking that merely changing the people will solve every problem is one-sided. A foreign company may at best modernise some things, but it cannot be said that the system itself will change.
She added that DP World cannot raise Bangladesh's institutional capacity beyond the port's infrastructure; that responsibility belongs to Bangladesh itself. Technical efficiency may certainly increase, but a port does not depend only on technical efficiency; it involves coordination with different stakeholders at different stages. Without proper coordination, extra investment may bring no benefit even if efficiency rises to a point. She also raised the risk of experienced employees losing their jobs, and the concern that administrative reform might merely change the structure of corruption and its beneficiary group rather than removing it.
As an alternative path, she stressed building the country's own capacity. International operators such as Dubai's DP World and Singapore's PSA acquired their expertise by operating their own countries' ports themselves rather than handing them to foreign companies. Learning from that example, she asked why Bangladesh is not building its own domestic capacity. In her view, if the government wishes, it can solve these problems itself through strict control; avoiding the hard work and leaving it to a foreign party is in effect re-establishing its own failure. Ahead of a final decision on NCT, this debate and warning now remain at the centre of policy discussion.
