Dibrugarh Resumes Direct River Cargo to Bangladesh

For the first time since 1947, commercial river freight has departed Upper Assam bound directly for an overseas port. A barge loaded with 540 metric tons of industrial methanol pushed off from Bogibeel Terminal in Dibrugarh, charting a 1,300-kilometer course down the Brahmaputra to Dhaka.

The cargo, manufactured by state-run Assam Petro-Chemicals at Namrup, is moving aboard the vessel DLB Patkai toward Pangaon Port in Bangladesh. The transit covers 768 kilometers along National Waterway-2 before linking into the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route. This voyage revives an export corridor that went quiet when Dibrugarh’s river ghat closed in October 1956.

The breakthrough follows the recent commissioning of permanent customs and immigration check posts at Bogibeel and Dhubri. For northeastern manufacturers, river transport provides a lower-cost alternative to choked highway passages through the Siliguri corridor. Authorities plan to establish fixed-schedule methanol dispatches backed by dedicated river cargo incentives.

Maintaining navigable draft across shallow stretches of the Brahmaputra remains the key operational hurdle for year-round trade. Even so, with national waterway cargo hitting 218 million metric tons this fiscal year, cross-border water links to Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar are steadily shifting from trials to working trade corridors.