Petrapole, June 19: India will offer money to Myanmar to open a sea-and-river trade route for the land-locked northeastern states bypassing Bangladesh.

The aid of $103 million (about Rs 475 crore) is meant to help Yangon develop its Sittwe port on the Bay of Bengal and make a river connecting Mizoram and Myanmar navigable for cargo.

“The future of (the) Northeast lies in bypassing Bangladesh. Sittwe will be the gateway for these states,” Union minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh said here today.

From Sittwe, goods will be ferried northwards along the river Kaladan to Mizoram, less than 200 km away. RITES, the government-owned engineering consultant and project manager, will be the implementing authority.

Ramesh, while promising a slew of initiatives to boost Indo-Bangla trade, came down heavily on Dhaka for not providing transit for Northeast-bound cargo.

India has been requesting Bangladesh to allow double-entry visa for individuals and rail and road transit for goods to ease movement between the Northeast and the rest of the country.

The Centre had also proposed that the Chittagong port be made the gateway to the northeastern states. Bangladesh has been dragging its feet on both proposals.

The nearest available ports for the seven northeastern states are Calcutta and Haldia ? a long drive for trucks, part of it through hilly terrain. Difficulty of access has been a major obstacle to the economic development of the Northeast.

From Sittwe, ships can sail to Calcutta or Visakhapatnam, providing the region with an alternative route to these ports.

Ramesh said the project would take three years to finish from its date of launch. “Our foreign secretary is in Yangon now for this purpose.”

The new route will boost export from the Northeast, industry leaders said.

“(The) Northeast is a resource-rich region. However, due to lack of access, the potentials have always been under-utilised. A gateway through Myanmar will unleash a resource-led growth in the Northeast,” said Dipankar Chatterjee, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s northeastern council.

India also wants to acquire two offshore blocks in Myanmar that will supply natural gas through a pipeline to the Northeast.

Foreign ministry officials said the project has been delayed because Bangladesh, through which the proposed pipeline must pass, has raised obstacles. Delhi is working on alternative arrangements.

India has been working with a sense of urgency on the Sittwe-Kaladan route to counter China’s growing influence over Yangon. Beijing recently announced it would build a pipeline from Sittwe to Kunmin, the capital of China’s Yunnan province.

Foreign secretary Shyam Saran’s visit to Myanmar follows President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s trip to that country in March this year. “The focus is on closer economic cooperation, particularly in infrastructure development,” a foreign ministry official said.