In an attempt to improve efficiency, the government has reportedly decided to transform the Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) into a corporation like Petrobangla, according to the minutes of a meeting between the prime minister and the Power Division officials.
On February 6, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the minister in-charge of the Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, held a meeting with the Power Division officials.
“We want to reform the PDB. So, we have directed the Power Division and PDB officials to prepare and submit a guideline on how to turn the PDB into a corporation soon,” State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid told the Dhaka Tribune.
On June 22, the Power Division held a meeting with the state minister in the chair to review the government’s decision to transform the PDB into a corporation.
An additional secretary of Power Division has been appointed to monitor the move.
“We are working to make the transformation. We hope that we will be able to submit a report soon,” PDB Chairman Md Abduhu Ruhulla told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
On the other hand, the Power Division is working to form a company to conduct operations and maintenance of public and private-owned power projects.
The government is also working to turn the 740MW Ghorasal Power Plant into a corporation as per a decision also made by the premier at the February 6 meeting.
The meeting also discussed the ways of creating three new distribution companies – South Zone Power Distribution Company, North-west Zone Power Distribution Company and Central Zone Power Distribution Company.
The government is also considering forming three separate specialised wings under the Power Division including an Engineering and Inspection (EI) wing, a Governance and Legal (G&L) wing and a Publicity wing.
However, PDB has already made a draft guideline to reform its board. According to guideline, all generation and distribution entities under the PDB will be converted into a Strategic Business Unit (SBU) in the future.
The SBU – running under a management board – will operate under the existing legal structure of the PDB, but will be functionally and financially separate like a corporate body.
The PDB as single buyer in power market of Bangladesh will sell power to the distribution business centres like other distribution companies or utilities. These business centres will be responsible for the overall distribution business within its franchise area.
The PDB will sign a performance target achievement (PTA) with the SBU management board.
Under the PTA, the PDB will evaluate performance of the SBU in some major areas including system loss reduction, collection-import ratio, operation and management cost, system average interruption frequency index, system average interruption duration index and overall cost optimisation.
Five subsidiary companies are at present running under the PDB, which was created in 1972 by presidential order-59, bifurcating Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).
