Why Port Modernisation a Matter of National Survival

A shopper in Dhaka is wincing at the price of edible oil. A garment factory in Gazipur is missing a shipping deadline. Trace the roots of every financial distress, and you will probably end up hitting upon the same reason: about 90% of Bangladesh’s international trade relies on its seaports. Chittagong Port alone handles somewhere between 90% and 98% of the country’s containerised imports and exports. That is a lot of pressure for just one part of the Karnaphuli River. For a $450-billion economy hinged on imported fuel, raw cotton and exported ready-made garments, this is not a secondary concern for policymakers to get to eventually. It is close to another whole story.
For years now, the story out of Chattogram has been the same: ships circling, waiting, piling up bills while nothing moves. If there is one genuinely encouraging story here, it is not about concrete or cranes, it is about software. In January 2026, the Bangladesh Water Transport Coordination Cell launched the Lighter Vessel Management Software, known locally as Jahaji, to digitise how roughly 1,800 to 2,500 lighter vessels get assigned to ferry cargo from mother ships waiting offshore. Before this, getting a discharge serial meant physically visiting several offices with a handwritten application, a system that had, unsurprisingly, become a magnet for favouritism and syndicate deals. Now it runs through a geo-fenced app on a first-come-first-served basis. The change showed up fast: within a month, the number of ships stranded at anchorage during the pre-Ramadan rush dropped from over 100 to 80, and serials that used to take two or three days were being issued daily. 
In November 2025, the port authority finalised a $550 million public-private partnership with APM Terminals-- the Maersk-linked operator out of the Netherlands-- to build the new Laldia Container Terminal, marketed as Bangladesh’s first “green port” and due to open sometime around 2029 or 2030. For a country trying to build an economy beyond garments alone, a deep-water terminal run to international environmental standards by one of the world’s biggest shipping operators is arguably worth more, long-term, than winning any single political fight over who runs NCT.
About 200 kilometres southwest, Mongla-- Bangladesh's second-largest port-- has ended up, somewhat unexpectedly, in the middle of a regional tug-of-war. A parcel of land once set aside for an Indian-backed economic zone was delisted in October 2025 after the developer failed to break ground. In June 2026, Bangladesh handed the same site to China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation instead, signing an MoU for the China-Bangladesh Mongla Port Economic Zone (TBS, 2026c). Set the geopolitics aside for a second, and the practical effect for Bangladesh is fairly simple: a port that has underperformed for years is finally attracting considerable amount of money, which takes some pressure off Chattogram carrying nearly everything alone.
Further south, Payra Port has had a quieter, steadier run. Dredging of the Ramnabad channel is done, and officials expect the first container terminal -- a 650-metre jetty built for 3,000–3,500 TEU vessels --to open by July 2026, with tariffs set 20% to 30% below what other ports charge, aimed at pulling in early business. It is not going to challenge Chattogram’s scale anytime soon. But as a pressure valve for bulk cargo and a cheaper entry point for southern industry, Payra deserves more attention in the national conversation than it usually gets.
Everything above is really just prelude to the bigger shift underway at Matarbari, in Cox's Bazar, where Japan is financing a deep-sea port with a 16-metre navigation channel, targeted to open in 2029. All existing ports in Bangladesh suffer from shallow depths and tidal limitations. Chattogram tops out around a 10-metre draft, which means large “mother vessels” cannot call there directly -- they offload at Singapore, Colombo, or Port Klang first, and smaller feeder ships carry the cargo the rest of the way. Matarbari’s deeper channel should let ships carrying over 8,000 TEUs-- nearly four times what Chattogram can handle -- dock directly, with officials projecting shipping costs down by around 57% and delivery times cut by roughly 60% once it is fully running. If even part of that holds up, Matarbari does not just take pressure off Chattogram. It turns Bangladesh into a transshipment point in its own right, potentially for landlocked neighbours too.
None of this infrastructure means much on its own if the institutions running it do not keep up. Chattogram closed out 2025 with record numbers across cargo, containers, and vessels handled, even while political unrest and worker protests kept testing the system. It means the people running these ports are already capable of pulling off remarkable numbers when the system is not actively working against them. What is left is mostly bureaucratic, not technical: clear the customs queue, for it is eating up nearly 40% of Chattogram's yard space; settle the operator question at NCT and CCT without another round of strikes; and treat Mongla, Payra, and eventually Matarbari as parts of one system rather than separate political trophies. Bangladesh does not have a shortage of ambition on its coastline. What it lacks is proper implementation of the decisions it has taken.