Dhaka keen on hydro plant

Sits with Delhi today to review electricity venture

Pallab Bhattacharya, New Delhi

Bangladesh is expected to propose setting up of a joint-venture hydropower plant in north-eastern region of India in a Joint Steering Committee (JSC) meeting on power sector cooperation in New Delhi tomorrow.
If India agrees in principle to Bangladesh's proposal, then other steps will be taken in this regard including choosing a site for the plant, from which Bangladesh could import electricity to meet its growing demand, a senior official of the Bangladesh foreign ministry told The Daily Star yesterday.
Dhaka is also likely to come up with a proposal to import power from Nepal and Bhutan through Indian territories.
Bangladesh was keen on getting power from the gas-based Palatana power project in neighbouring Tripura state, for which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, during her visit to Agartala earlier this year, had even expressed her government's interest to buy a stake.
But sources said the deals for sale of power from Palatana project had been firmed up even before Bangladesh made the offer.
Senior officials from Bangladesh and India will sit here today in a meeting of the Joint Working Group (JWG) on power sector cooperation, to do the groundwork for tomorrow's JSC meeting headed by power secretaries of the two countries.
Both sides will also review the progress in implementation of the deals inked between the two countries on power sector at the JWG meeting, said the foreign ministry official, who is already in New Delhi in connection with the meeting.
The two meetings are follow-up actions by the two sides in the light of the Joint Communique issued after Hasina's visit to New Delhi in January, 2010, in which concrete bilateral cooperation in power sector was an important component.
This is the first time the two countries have moved in to diversify their cooperation in power sector.
So far, Bangladesh and India have signed a number of deals including import of 250 megawatt power by Bangladesh and setting up of a 1,320-MW coal-fired joint-venture power plant in Khulna.
A final deal on the Khulna plant was signed in Dhaka last month between Bangladesh's state-owned Power Development Board and India's state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation.
But on the issue of power import, there has not been much progress and the Delhi meetings will try to settle the issues of tariff at which electricity will be exported to Bangladesh, and the power plant from which India will supply electricity.
Officials from Bangladesh finance ministry and commerce ministry will be in the Bangladesh delegation for tomorrow's JSC meeting.