Petrapole, Benapole land customs stations to work 7 days

Come Jan 1, 2014, Land Customs Stations at Petrapole in India and Benapole in Bangladesh will now be made operational all seven days a week, an official release said here.

This move came after Minister of Textiles K.S. Rao wrote to Finance Minister P. Chidambaram about the congestion at Bangladesh border. Various exporters had raised this issue with the textiles minister at 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," Rao said.

The finance ministry has taken measures to facilitate the trade at Petrapole, including extended working hours, for the functioning of customs.

Trucks carrying export cargo are allowed up to the land custom stations (LCS) of the importing country to discharge 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 release said.

The delay in movement of export cargo at Petrapole is primarily due to infrastructural inadequacies at LCS, poor road conditions, traffic congestion and lack of authorised parking facilities.

It added that 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."