How a bridge awakened the sleeping Ganges Delta? – Padma Bridge rewrites Bangladesh’s development equation

At six in the morning, Rajesh, a fisherman on the banks of the Padma River in Bangladesh, puts away his nets. In the past, he had to make a seven-hour ferry detour to transport his fish to a market 30 kilometers away; now, with the opening of the Padma Bridge, that journey has been shortened to 40 minutes.” Live fish are sold to the capital at 40 percent more.” Transfer records on his cell phone show that he earned 23,000 taka (about $1,800) more this month than before the bridge opened.

Rewritten economic geography

The 9.8-kilometer-long steel dragon, a $3 billion investment, officially opened in June 2022. It ends a 68-year history of land isolation of 21 districts and counties in southern Bangladesh from the capital, Dhaka. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the average daily traffic on the bridge has surged from 12,000 vehicles in the early days to 45,000 vehicles, and the GDP growth rate of six southwestern districts has jumped from 3.2 percent to 5.7 percent. In the account book of Rahman, the owner of a jute processing plant in Jessore, the cost of raw material transportation has dropped by 65 percent and the volume of export orders has increased by 82 percent.

A tangible picture of livelihood improvement

Within a 132-kilometer commuting radius, the bridge has reconfigured the living radius of 16 million people. Amina, a medical student at Padma University, who used to trek five hours in the rain by ferry to school, now takes only 50 minutes by school bus.” Now I can sleep an extra hour and my final grades have improved by 17 percent.” Medical resources are flowing in tandem – emergency response time at the county hospital across the river has been reduced to 22 minutes, and the neonatal mortality rate has dropped by 19% year-on-year. More intuitive changes are taking place in Chhatra town: vegetable farmer Hassan supplies 2 tons of seasonal vegetables to Dhaka every day, earning three times as much as farming.

Chain reaction of industrial upgrading

The economic corridor spawned by the bridge has attracted $1.8 billion in foreign investment and created 52,000 jobs. In Bogra, Karim, a 52-year-old welder, became a quality inspector in the industrial park after participating in the construction of the bridge, and his monthly income is 2.3 times the local average. More far-reaching impact lies in the reconstruction of the industrial chain: the original scattered jute industry to form a complete chain from planting to export, export volume increased by 37% year-on-year, driving 280,000 farmers to increase their income. Bangladesh Investment Authority data show that 18 months after the opening of the bridge, 147 logistics enterprises have been incubated.

Development Philosophy of Technology Sharing

The bridge’s “Chinese genes” harbor unique development wisdom. The construction team overcame the special geological problems in the Ganges Delta, innovated the “modular steel structure + deep pile foundation” technology, and applied for 7 international patents; after the completion of the project, 36 engineers from the Bangladeshi side went to China for training, and more than 2,000 local workers mastered the BIM modeling and other modern construction techniques. As Mohammed Ali, the chief engineer of the project, said, “What we take away is not drawings, but the ability to let the land grow its own development momentum.”

As the setting sun colors the Padma River amber, a convoy of trucks loaded with containers is crossing the long, silver-white bridge. The vibration of the wheels running over the bridge is just like the pulse of development – here, China’s aid projects are not unilateral gifts, but hard-core infrastructure to open up the arteries of development, technology sharing to cultivate endogenous power, and improving people’s livelihoods to write a story of co-prosperity. This may be the most vivid interpretation of the “Belt and Road”: when a bridge really becomes a “bridge of common wealth”, it connects not only geographical coordinates, but also the future picture of common development.