Govt approves 162MW power plant project

Bangladesh and China are going to set up a 162-megawatt furnace oil-based power plant under private investment as per the former's policy.

The cabinet committee on purchase approved the plant at a meeting yesterday with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in the chair.

The government will buy electricity from the plant at Tk 8.2868 or 10.5350 dollar cents per kilowatt hour. It will be run under the built-own-operate basis for 15 years.

The consortium, comprising Changzhou HuTang Coal Power Co Ltd of China and Icon Enterprise Ltd and Chase Power Ltd of Bangladesh will set up the plant at Singair in Manikganj.

According to a Power Division proposal, the government will have to spend more than Tk 14,000 crore in 15 years for buying electricity from the consortium. The entity will purchase land, set up transmission lines and a sub-station with its own money, said the proposal. The cabinet committee also extended the tenure of two existing power purchase deals.

One extension, which is by six months to July, will allow the government to continue importing 250MW of electricity from PTC India Ltd under open market. The timeframe ended in January.

The committee also approved a Bangladesh Power Development Board proposal to buy electricity at 0.0764 cents per unit. It was earlier 0.0774 cents per unit.

The committee extended by two years the tenure of another plant set up under the private sector power generation policy. The fresh tenure goes up to June 2019 and puts the price at Tk 15.4222 per unit.

NEPC Consortium Power Ltd set up the plant at Narayanganj's Haripur in 1999 for 15 years. It was gas-based in the beginning and started running on furnace oil in 2010.