PM approves nine power purchase proposals without tender

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has approved nine proposals for purchasing expensive electricity from private fuel oil-fired power plants with 1,763MW combined capacity without any tender.
‘We have received the prime minister’s approval yesterday,’ a power division official told New Age on Wednesday.
The power division would send the proposals to the cabinet committee on government purchase in the next week for approval before awarding the contracts, the official said.
The Power Development Board would buy electricity from six furnace oil-fired power plants with 963MW capacity for Tk 8.53 per unit or kilowatt-hour for 15 years and Tk 20.38 per unit from three diesel-fired plants with 700MW capacity for five years contracts, said the official.
The contracts would be awarded under the Speedy Supply of Power and Energy (Special Provisions) Act 2010 that indemnified officials concerned against any prosecution for awarding contracts without any tender. 
Energy expert M Shamsul Alam, also an electrical engineer, said that the average price of electricity would exceed Tk 12 per unit from furnace oil-fired plant and Tk 30 per unit from diesel-fired plants even if the prices of fuel oils remained as low as now.
The average price would shoot up as 35-40 per cent of the capacity of furnace oil-fired power plants and 25-30 per cent of the capacity of diesel-fired power plants would be used, he explained.
He warned that the government move would ultimately raise the electricity price significantly as it had earlier raised the price by about 70 per cent to pay the rent or capacity charge to the private companies for 1,665MW power plants.
Power Cell director general, however, said that the government had no other ways but to increase the power generation capacity before next summer as construction of large coal-fired power plants made little progress.
According to the proposals, electricity would be
supplied by Summit Group at 10.6 US cents per unit from 300MW plant to be set up at Kodda in Gazipur, Orion at 10.60 cents from 100MW plant in Khulna, Confidence Power at 10.60 cents from 113MW plant in Bogra, Desh Energy at 10.65 cents from 200MW plant in Chadpur, Midland Power at 10.50 cents from 150MW plant at Ashuganj and Acorn Infrastructure Services at 10.50 cents from 100MW plant at Julda in Chittagong.
Among diesel-fired power plants, Bangla Trac Ltd would supply electricity at 25.4171 cents from 200MW plant at Daudkhandi and 100MW plant at Noapara, Aggreko International Projects Ltd would supply at 25.0039 cents from 200MW plant at Karanigonj and APR would supply at 25.417 cents from 300MW plant at Keraniganj.
On July 10, the power division asked the Power Development Board to negotiate power purchase contracts for 2,000MW fuel oil-fired plants to be commissioned by March 2018. 
On July 27, the power division sent the proposals to the Prime Minister’s Office for approval. 

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net