330MW power plant to be built in Khulna

The government will set up a new power plant in Khulna, which will mostly be financed by China, to generate 330MW of power in an effort to supply more electricity to the people of the southern parts of the country.

The decision was made at the weekly meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council, held at the NEC conference room yesterday with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

The duel-fuel combined-cycle power plant will be set up on the bank of Bhairab river at Khalishpur in Khulna, and will be completed by 2019 at a cost of Tk 3,254 crore.

Of the amount, China will finance Tk 2,014 crore in the project, while the remaining Tk 1,240 crore will come from the state coffer.

On the project site, several state-owned power plants were set up in 1954 on 62 acres of land. Save for two units, all of them are now defunct.

Along with the new power plant, Ecnec yesterday approved a total of 15 projects with an overall outlay of Tk 26,411 crore.

Among other projects, two were for the development of primary education, involving a total of Tk 14,865 crore.

The projects will be financed by the government and are expected to be complete by 2022.

There are around 81,000 government and non-government primary schools in Bangladesh, where some 1.95 crore students are studying, according to the planning ministry.

The primary schools were able to improve their infrastructure by 30 percent recently with financing from development partners.