The land port will immensely contribute to the promotion of trade and tourism among Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Bhutan, officials in Dhaka said.

The land port in Panchagarh district will be opened at a simple ceremony on Saturday while the formal inauguration will take place in July this year.

"We have deferred the formal opening in view of the prevailing political situation in India," a commerce ministry official said yesterday.

The commerce ministers and presidents of apex trade bodies of the four South Asian countries will be present at the formal inauguration.

The commerce ministry officials hope the port has great potential for increasing trade and creating new opportunities of doing business with Nepal and Bhutan.

Bangladeshi goods like readymade garments, ceramics, biscuits, cosmetics, battery and jute goods have good demand in these two land-locked Himalayan states.

Banglabandha is the most important land customs station (LCS) in the country because of its geographical location. Siliguri in West Bengal is only 5-km away from this point.

Besides, the Nepalese border transit point Kakorvita is 61 km away while the Bhutanese border is 68 km away from the land port.

However, India currently allows only two hours a day for using its road as transit for transporting goods between Bangladesh and Nepal.

Banglabandha has been an LCS for many years but due to lack of facilities and infrastructure, it could not be made a full-fledged land port.

To make it fully operational as a land port, the government has already built necessary infrastructures with customs, banking and immigration facilities.

The government took steps to develop the land port as landlocked Nepal showed interest to use Mongla port for importing goods from other countries.

Bangladesh offers discount on port charges for Nepal-bound goods to encourage Nepalese importers in using Mongla port.

According to an estimate, full utilisation of the Banglabandha-Fulbari (India)-Kakarvita (Nepal) route can divert 20 percent of Nepal's export-import cargoes to Mongla seaport from the Indian ports of Kolkata and Haldia.

"So we expect a huge boost in the bilateral trade between Bangladesh and Nepal with the commissioning of Banglabandha land port," said an official.

He said the land port will also promote tourism as many attractive tourist destinations including Darjeeling in India, and others in Nepal and Bhutan are not far away.