The cabinet committee on purchase yesterday approved a proposal of the railway ministry to construct a circular railway around the Dhaka city under ‘Construction of Circular Railway Line around Dhaka City’ project under Public Private Partnership (PPP).

The approval was given at a meeting of the committee at the secretariat with the finance minister in the chair. The committee has also given approval to the ‘procurement guideline’ of the project, which will be implemented under a government to government (G to G) initiative in cooperation with the Japan government.

A total of $8500 million will be needed to implement the circular train network spanning 81.9km around the capital Dhaka, according to the proposal.

As per the proposal, the project aims at easing the traffic congestion of the capital and that about two crore city dwellers will be able to move smoothly inside the city.

According to the project plan, the 81.9km circular train network will have 20 stations at Tongi, Termuk, Purbachal, Beraid, Kayetpara, Demra, Siddhirganj, Chowdhury Bari, Chasara, Fatullah, Shyampur, Sadarghat, Babu Bazar, Nawabganj, Sankar, Gabtoli, Dhaka Zoo, Birulia, Uttara and Dheor.

Bangladesh Railway (BR) is the implementing agency for the project. Chinese firm China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation has already completed a pre-feasibility study to implement the proposed circular rail route.