World Bank (WB) has agreed to fund the reinstallation of the 210-megawatt Ghorashal Power Plant unit-4, a project undertaken by the Power Development Board, officials said Tuesday.
Under the project, the existing plant will be dismantled and replaced with a new one.
The procurement arrangement for the plant will elaborately be discussed next month when a WB delegation is expected to visit Bangladesh.
Besides financing such a large power project, the world’s top donor agency will assist to implement the power and energy visions taken by the government earlier.
The assurance came during a high level delegation visit, headed by Advisor to the Prime Minister Tawfiq-E-Elahi Chowdhury, to the WB headquarters in Washington from September 9 to 13.
The delegation includes power division secretary Monowar Islam, Director General of Power Cell Mohammad Hossain, Pertobangla Chairman Mohammad Hussain Monsur, Rural Electrification Board Chairman Moin Uddin, BERC member Salim Mahmud and deputy secretary of energy and mineral resources division Syed Masum Ahmed Chowdhury.
The delegation met Julia Bucknall, the bank’s sector manager of energy sustainable development unit, South Asia Region and S Vijay Iyer, director of development of sustainable development energy and extractives.
“WB will provide assistance whenever Bangladesh needs,” Director General of Power Cell Mohammad Hossain, who was also a member of the delegation during the visit to the WB head office, told the Dhaka Tribune on Tuesday.
A total of $40bn is required to implement various projects in power and energy sectors, he said.
The WB energy team will coordinate with its other arms (MIGA, IFC, SEGOM and FSU) to respond to Bangladesh on different possible initiatives in energy and power sector development, he said.
MIGA and IFC, the two arms of the bank, will deal to revitalise the government’s long-cherished public private partnership, according to the minutes of discussion between the WB and the Bangladesh delegation.
The WB appreciated Bangladesh for the strong and professional leadership demonstrated in the Rural Electrification Board (REB) in recent times. The institutional strengthening measures need to be sustained to make REB ready for taking on the challenges of universal access by 2021, says the minutes.
Approval of the revised organogram for REB needs to be expedited to ensure that REB has the required manpower to carry out the increased activities envisaged under the proposed WB support, it said.
WB also gave assurance to assist in some issues, including diversifying the power generation mix by incorporating liquid fuel, cross-border hydro and gas-based power transfers through greater regional integration, greenfield coal-based generation, renewable energy, LNG (liquefied natural gas) imports and enhancing current gas output through increased exploration and production activities.
It showed keen interest to build LNG receiving terminals one is floating storage regasification unit, which is a shorter term solution with an 18-month construction period and another is land-based LNG regas terminal, which is to be implemented over the next several years.
WB will also support for developing of a regional power grid, with power generation and transfer plans through India, hydro power from northern India, Bhutan and Nepal, gas transmission from Myanmar and becoming part of Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) planned gas pipeline.
