Improvement of generation, distribution aimed at
The government would seek US$2.28 billion from donors, specially from China, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Japan for developing the country’s power sector, officials said Tuesday. The fund will be used for nine power generation and distribution projects, they said. The Power Division has made the demand for funds while submitting the preliminary project proposals to the Planning Commission (PC), said a Division official.
“The proposed nine projects are very important for the power sector development. Since the government lacks funds, we have decided to borrow from the development partners,” he told the FE.
A PC official said they have got nine proposals from the Power Division. “Now we will send those to the Economic Relations Division (ERD) for finding suitable donors for funding.”
According to the plan, the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has sought US$221.09 million for upgrading the existing Ghorashal 210 megawatt (MW) 3rd unit power plant to 450MW, $617.56 million for the Keraniganj 750MW plant, $1.24 billion for 1500MW plant at Meghnaghat, $101.53 million for 6th and 7th units of the Kaptai Hydro power plant, $44.03 million for the Jangalia (Comilla) 50MW plant and $19.59 million for the Manikganj 25MW power plant.
Besides, the state-owned BPDB has also sought US$11.52 million in loans for power distribution system development project (Comilla Zone), $17.19 million for power distribution system development project (Rangpur Zone), and $11.77 million for pre-paid metering project (Rajshahi Zone). A senior BPDB official said they need to expand generation capacity of the 3rd unit of the Ghorashal 210MW plant to 450MW one.
“The generation capacity of the 210MW plant at Ghorasal has de-rated to only 170MW due to its old age. It requires 47 million cubic feet of gas per day (MMCFD) for operation. But we can expand the capacity of the units to 450MW using only 64MMCFD of gas,” he said.
“We also want to expand our hydro-power at Kaptai. We have decided to set up two more units (6th and 7th) there investing US$150 million,” the official said.
“Besides, we have taken ambitious initiatives to set up 750X2MW capacity HFO-cum-natural gas run power station at Meghnaghat at a cost of $1.75 billion and 750MW HFO-cum-natural gas firmed combined cycle plant at Keraniganj investing $882.59 million funds,” the BPDB official said.
Currently, Bangladesh’s electricity generation capacity has risen to about 6600MW a day against the demand for more that 7500MW.
Considering the country’s economic growth at 7.0 percent, Bangladesh’s anticipated peak demand for electricity would be nearly 10,283MW in financial year (FY) 2015, 17,304 MW in FY2020 and 25,199 MW in 2025, the BPDB said.
-With The Financial Express input
