Currently, Bangladesh’s prime seaport has a 50,000-TEU storage capacity, including the yard at Pangaon Inland Container Terminal. However, the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) will build a one million-square-meter (1.19 million-square-yard) mega-container yard, which will substantially increase storage capacity, lessening port yard congestion. The new facility, to be called Bay Container Yard (BCY), will add space for 550,000 TEUs, increasing Chittagong port’s storage capacity to 600,000 TEUs — a more than tenfold increase in yard storage capacity. The new yard is expected to cost $87.5 million and will be built by PSA Singapore.

With average annual container handling growth of more than 10 percent, the Chittagong port yard faces acute congestion throughout the year from container storage. Moreover, during festival-linked holidays, when truckers are reluctant to transport cargo, the number of containers at the port yard exceeds storage capacity. 

Chittagong, which handles nearly 90 percent of  Bangladesh’s seaborne trade, handled nearly 3 million TEU in 2017, compared with its designed annual capacity of 1.7 million TEU. The private sector inland container depots (ICDs) provide some storage container relief for Chittagong port; the ICDs can handle 1.56 million TEU per year.