Mongla Isn't the Quiet Second Port Anymore, Here's What the Numbers Show

For years the line on Mongla was that it was Bangladesh's underused second port, fine for niche cargo, irrelevant to anyone who could get a slot at Chattogram instead. The numbers from the current fiscal year don't really support that story anymore. Mongla planning remains vessel-specific: use the latest MPA movement order, berth schedule, pilot advice and tide window rather than a historic single draft or transit figure. Confirm current Mongla Port Authority particulars for draft, berth and traffic before the call.

The growth is real, not a one-quarter blip

Mongla handled 17,387 TEUs of containers across 28 vessels in the first half of FY2025-26 (July-December 2025), a record, and a meaningful jump from where the port was a year earlier. Add January and the seven-month total hit 21,651 TEUs, which already surpassed the entire previous fiscal year's container volume of 21,456 TEUs, a 79% year-on-year increase. Cargo throughput overall reached 8.27 million tonnes over that seven-month window, up just over 25% on the same period a year prior. Vessel arrivals told the same story: 515 international commercial ships called in seven months, against roughly that same number for the whole of the prior fiscal year.

What's actually moving through

Imports lean heavily toward bulk and project-style cargo, food grain, cement clinker, fertilizer, automobiles, machinery, rice, wheat, coal, oil and LPG. Reconditioned vehicle imports in particular have become a significant volume driver; 6,404 used cars arrived through Mongla in the first seven months of FY2025-26 alone. Exports run smaller in tonnage but are economically important regionally, shrimp, white fish, crab, frozen food, jute and jute goods, and silk fabrics from the southwestern districts the port directly serves.

The EPZ and the wider development push

Mongla EPZ sits adjacent to the port and has been expanding alongside it, part of a broader cluster of southwestern development that includes the Rampal coal-fired power plant, a planned special economic zone, and improved road and rail links toward Khulna and onward to Dhaka via the Padma Bridge corridor. None of these projects are run by the port authority directly, but they're the reason Mongla's hinterland cargo base keeps growing, manufacturers and traders in the southwest increasingly find it genuinely cheaper and simpler to route through Mongla than to truck cargo all the way to Chattogram.

Why this matters beyond the headline numbers

Mongla's own finance officials made a point worth repeating: transporting goods through Mongla is, for businesses based in the southwest, both easier and less costly than routing via Chattogram. That's not marketing language, it's the practical reason behind the volume shift. The Mongla Port Authority posted record revenue of Tk 343.33 crore and net profit of Tk 62.10 crore in FY2024-25, more than triple its profit target, which is the kind of number that tends to attract further government investment in dredging and jetty capacity rather than the port being left to coast on legacy infrastructure.

What it means for planning a call

A growing port with a still-limited jetty draft (see our berth directory for the specifics) means tighter scheduling than a few years back, but also a port authority actively motivated to keep cargo moving and dredging progressing. For agents and owners, that translates into: book earlier than you would have a couple of years ago, but expect a port genuinely invested in making the call work.