Power purchase deals signed with S Alam-led groups

The government yesterday signed power purchase agreements with two private joint ventures led by S Alam Group to buy electricity at 8.259 US cents or Tk 6.61 per kilowatt-hour.

The state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board or BPDB struck the deals for the two projects with total electricity generation capacity of 1,224 megawatts.

SS Power I Ltd and SS Power II Ltd, two joint ventures of S Alam Group and SEPCOIII Electric Power and HTG of China, will set up the power plants in Banshkhali, Chittagong by November 2019.  The electricity will be supplied for 25 years.

The project will require an investment of $2.4 billion of which $1.75 billion will come from Chinese lenders, according to a handout distributed during the contract signing ceremony at Bidyut Bhaban in Dhaka.

BPDB and Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, another state-run company, also signed project implementation agreements with the joint ventures.  SEPCOIII, a power generation company in China, would be the contractor for engineering, procurement and construction of the two power plants. It operates in coal, oil, gas-fired thermal power, hydropower, solar, wind, and biomass-based power generation.

S Alam Group has investment in commodities, transport, banking, leasing, insurance, stock broker houses and merchant banking business and power.

Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, energy adviser to the prime minister, Ahmad Kaikaus, additional secretary of the Power Division, Mohammad Saiful Alam, chairman of S Alam Group, Zhang Hongsong, executive president of SEPCOIII, and Hu Jai, head of project manager at HTG, were present during the programme.