Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) will have to pay Tk39.74 crore for imported Indian electricity while Tk267.14 crore for quick rental power as last December-January bills.
It shows that the Indian electricity costs PDB an average of Tk6 a unit compared to quick rental’s nearly Tk18.
PDB has sought a total of Tk306.88 crore from finance ministry to pay the import and quick rental bills for the months.
Under a 500MW deal signed between the two countries in 2010, Bangladesh started importing electricity commercially in October last year from its neighbour. So far, the daily import has marked from 440-450MW.
PDB purchases 1,405MW of electricity from rental and quick rental power projects and 1,066MW from Independent Power Plants.
As the imported electricity is much cheaper than the local quick rentals, the PDB officials said the government should prefer importing to buying from quick rental plants.
“More import than buying from local quick rental plants will ease burden on the budget,” said a senior finance division official.
Bangladesh is buying electricity from the Indian public sector at Tk5.45 per unit and the private sector at Tk6.43.
India’s state-owned NTPC and a private sector company supply electricity to Bangladesh under the deal signed when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited India in 2010 during her previous term.
India said it was “ready to supply another 500MW to Bangladesh.”
The interest was expressed at a recent joint secretary level meeting in Dhaka.
In the meeting, Arvind Mehta, Joint Secretary for Foreign Trade (South Asia) of India’s commerce department, said his country “is ready to export another 500MW of electricity to Bangladesh.”
He said: “Bangladesh is already receiving a supply of 500MW from India under a previous commitment.”.
But there would need building of infrastructure for that import, Arvind Mehta added.
For the present import, a 100-km double-circuit 400-kV transmission line was installed from Baharampur in India to Bheramara in Bangladesh, of which 73.5 km falls on Indian part and 27.36 km in Bangladesh.
The line was set up at a cost of $196.8m (equivalent to Tk1,600 crore).
“The government’s fund will definitely be saved if it imports more electricity from India,” said Nasrul Hamid, State Minister for Power and Energy. “But another high-level decision may be required to open this avenue.”
He said the country would be self-reliant when the works of base load power plants were completed. “Then we will not need to import and can have local power at a reasonable rate.”
Bangladesh signed a power-purchase agreement in February 2012 with India wherein an indicative tariff was fixed at about Rs3 or Tk5.5 per unit.
Meanwhile, official data showed power subsidy totalled Tk2834.26 crore in July-January period of the current fiscal.
PDB Secretary Md Jahurul Huq requested finance division through power division not to consider the subsidy as a loan as per the directive of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC).
He said the PDB would pay petroleum fuel bills in advance to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) after getting subsidy.