By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 25, 2013: THE Ministry of Finance has decided to make two of its Land Customs Stations on Bangladesh border operational 24x7 from January 1, 2014. These two Stations are Petrapole and Benapole.

Such a decision was taken in the wake of Union Minister of Textiles, Dr. K.S. Rao, writing to the Union Finance Minister, Mr P.Chidambaram, about the congestion at Bangladesh border. Various exporters had raised this issue with the Textiles Minister in a recent meeting. “The move will ease off the way for trade between the two countries and it will especially benefit the textiles sectors of both the countries,” said Dr. Rao.

The Finance Ministry has taken measures to facilitate the trade at Petrapole including extended working hours for the functioning of Customs at Petrapole and aligning the weekly holiday with Bangladesh so as to provide more working days to the trade. The movement of trucks carrying export cargo is allowed up to the LCS of the importing country for discharge of cargo. Regular meetings are being held between the jurisdictional Commissioners of Customs of India and Bangladesh as well as meetings with trade at the border to address issues of concern to the trade. These steps are expected to ease out the traffic congestion to a large extent.

The delay in movement of export cargo at Petrapole is primarily due to infrastructural inadequacies at LCS, Petrapole emerging out of road conditions, traffic congestion and lack of authorized parking facilities. These issues are being taken up with the district administration. To address these further, the Land Ports Authority of India is building an Integrated Check Post (ICP) incorporating state of the art infrastructural facilities at Petrapole, which is expected to be ready by operation in 2014 which will further reduce congestion and ensure smooth flow of goods being exported from India to Bangladesh.