Hatirjheel-Begunbari Integrated Development — Engineered Wetland Flood Storage for Central Dhaka

Before the project, the Hatirjheel-Begunbari area in central Dhaka was a heavily encroached, polluted low-lying wetland choked with informal settlements and waste, contributing to chronic drainage congestion and flooding across the surrounding neighbourhoods.
RAJUK, Dhaka's development authority, began construction in February 2008 (approved by ECNEC in October 2007 at an estimated ৳873.5 crore) using the Bangladesh Army as the executing contractor. The finished works restored 122 hectares (302 acres) of wetland and open space, engineered to hold approximately 3.06 billion litres of water in the dry season and up to 4.81 billion litres in the rainy season, explicitly to absorb stormwater and reduce drainage congestion. The project also built 8.8 km of expressway, 9.8 km of service roads, four bridges, three viaducts, walkways, a children's park and an amphitheatre, and required demolishing roughly 1,200 illegal settlements and acquiring land at a cost of ৳1,048 crore.
The project missed its original June 2010 completion target, was extended six times, and finally opened to the public on 2 January 2013; the total cost rose to ৳2,236.02 crore (about US$180 million) — roughly 2.6 times the original estimate. Maintenance passed from the Bangladesh Army to RAJUK in 2021, and a dedicated police station (Hatirjheel Thana) was established in 2018 to manage the area. In 2025 the project received the Asian Townscape Award in the "Lake and Water Body Development" category — Dhaka's first city-level win in that category.
Post-completion reporting documents ongoing water pollution in the lake and continued informal encroachment pressure, and the scale of displacement and the near-tripling of project cost are recurring criticisms in Bangladeshi press coverage of the project.

Read the full analysis: https://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/hatirjheel-project-cost-rises-to-tk1900cr