The government is going to borrow more than $800 million loan from the overseas banks on high interest rate to pay the oil import bills fattened due to costly
rental power plants, officials said on Monday.
A committee dealing with hard-term loans is scheduled to review three proposals today in a meeting for taking the loan, one of the biggest at one go, at the finance ministry.
Finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith will preside over the meeting at 12:00pm after the Energy Division proposed for the loan deals to secure funds for oil supply in the current year.
According to the Energy Division proposals, PNOC, state-owned Philippine oil producer, agreed to provide $328 million credit at 4.5 per cent interest with provision of 150 days of deferred payment.
The second proposal is $250 million that will be provided by Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC and Citibank NA at 5.03 interest rate or 4.28 plus LIBOR with provision of 180 days of deferred payment on both the occasions.
HSBC has syndicated with NATIXIS, a French investment bank, and gave the third proposal for another $250 million at 4.5 per cent with repayment in 360 days.
The country’s dependency on hard-term loan increases
as available loan from multinational Islamic Development Bank is not sufficient to meet the growing demand of fuel oils.
The annual import by the BPC, state-owned oil importer, went up by more than 35 per cent in 2012 than in 2011 after two dozen of rental power plants commissioned during the period.
Bangladesh’s oil imports hit over 5.2 million tonnes in last year. The annual bill for the fuel oils import hit closer to $5 billion in the same year.
-With New Age input
