NTPC will build and operate the $1.5 billion project on a 50:50 equity basis
Bangladesh’s state-run Power Development Board on Sunday signed an agreement with India’s NTPC Ltd to build a 1,320MW coal-fired power plant in the south-west of the country, officials said.
The signing ceremony in Dhaka was attended by Bangladeshi finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith and P. Uma Shankar, the power secretary of India. It is the first joint venture deal the board has concluded with a foreign company.
NTPC will build and operate the $1.5 billion project on a 50:50 equity basis.
Bangladesh has increasingly turned to coal to generate electricity as the nation’s natural gas reserves are depleting fast, and may not last beyond 2021 unless new structures are found and explored.
Officials have said Bangladesh wants to nearly triple power generation to 15,357MW by the end of 2015. The country, home to 160 million people, now generates the bulk of its energy from natural gas and imported fuel oil, but suffers from power shortages as wide as 1,500MW a day.
Bangladesh has reserves of about 3.4 billion tonnes of coal, but only produces about 2,000 tonnes a day from one mine.
Plans to collect coal from the other mines have been delayed in the face of violent protest by human rights and environment protection groups, which say the extraction would displace thousands of families and pollute the air.
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