S Alam Group teams up with Chinese firm for coal power plant

S Alam Group, one of the fastest growing local companies, yesterday struck an agreement with SEPCOIII Electric Power Cons-truction Corporation of China to set up coal-fired power plants in Chittagong with capacity of 1,320 megawatt.
Mohammed Saiful Alam, chairman and managing director of S Alam Group, and Zhang Hongsong, exeutive president of SEPCOIII, signed the deal at the Westin Hotel in Dhaka.
Under the deal, a separate company will be formed within two months to initiate the process of setting up the power plant with an estimated initial cost of $1.8 billion.
Officials said the new company would sign a separate agreement with state-run Power Development Board, which will mandate the joint venture to complete the construction work in 45 months.
The price of the electricity will be Tk 6 per kilowatt-hour, according to Subrata Kumar Bhowmuck, executive director of S Alam Group, adding that the coal might come from Indonesia.
SEPCOIII, a power generation company in China, operates in coal, oil, gas-fired thermal power, hydropower, solar, wind, and biomass-based power generation.
Since its inception in 1985, SEPCOIII has an aggregated installed capacity of 29,000mw, with single unit capacity ranging from 12mw to 1,000mw, according to its website.
The company has set up coal-based power plants in India, company officials said.
S Alam Group, which has investment in commodities, transport, banking, leasing, insurance, stock broker houses and merchant banking business, is however a new player in the country’s power sector.