India reduces power supply to Bangladesh

Tk 5,736 cr bill outstanding

Staff Correspondent; Bangladesh has an agreement to import 2,656 megawatts of electricity from India. This electricity imported from six public-private owned power stations of the country. For this, Tk 1000 crore to Tk 1400 crores of bills have to be paid per month. However, due to not getting regular subsidy, Bangladesh is not able to pay the electricity import bill from India. India has reduced electricity supply to Bangladesh.
According to the data of Power Development Board (PDB), the total bill of electricity import from India last financial year was Tk 16,450.14 crore. Out of this, Tk 10,713.88 crore has been paid till August 8. In other words, the electricity import bill from India is Tk 5,736.26 crore, which is 36 percent of the total bill. Taking the exchange rate of Tk 118, the outstanding amount is $48.61 crore.
According to sources, currently Bangladesh buys 160, 250 and 300 MW of electricity in three phases from NVVN (Vidyut Vapar Nigam Limited), a subsidiary of Indian state-owned company NTPC. Out of this 160 MW comes from Tripura. Besides, 250 MW from Sembcorp India, 200 MW from PTC and 1,496 MW from Adani Power’s Jharkhand are imported.
Although Adani’s Jharkhand power plant was built only for export to Bangladesh, India has recently changed the law in this regard. In this case, if the bill is not paid regularly or if the demand of Bangladesh decreases, Adani will be able to sell Jharkhand electricity to the Indian government as well, according to the new law.
Meanwhile, NTPC’s Tripura center is being supplied with 60 to 100 MW of electricity instead of 160 MW due to non-payment of bills. The rest of the centers are going down from 1000 MW to 700 MW at times. Only the Adani center is getting regular full capacity electricity. However, yesterday a unit of the center was closed for maintenance.
According to PDB data, Adani’s power plant currently has the highest bill arrears. Till last June, the bill of this center was Tk 9,202.18 crores. However, Tk 5,918.32 crore has been paid till August 8. That is, the outstanding bill amount is Tk 3,283.86 crore. Among the other two private sector companies in India, Sembcorp Energy has an outstanding bill of Tk 932.54 crore and PTC India’s outstanding bill is Tk 881.29 crore.

Among the three centers of NTPC, the outstanding bill of 300 MW is Tk 283 crore 69 lakh, the outstanding bill of 160 MW of Tripura is Tk 117.22 crore and the outstanding bill of 250 MW is Tk 61.94 crore. And three transmission lines of the country’s Power Grid Company are used to import power from India. For this, the monthly bill has to be paid on an average of Tk 16 crore to Tk 18 crore. The arrears of the three transmission lines of the power grid stand at Tk 175.72 crore.
Officials of PDB said on the condition of anonymity that due to non-availability of subsidy according to the demand in the power sector, regular bill payments are not being made. In addition to the public and private centers of the country, the electricity import bill from India is also due. And the entire bill in India has to be paid in dollars. This increases the pressure to pay bills. Incidentally, in 2014, Bangladesh started importing 250 MW of electricity from NVVN for the first time on G2G basis. The term of this agreement is 25 years. That is, the contract will expire in 2039. And the remaining 300 MW of NVVN, 200 MW of PTC and 250 MW of Sembcorp were signed in 2018. The duration of these three contracts is 15 years. That is, these three agreements will end in 2033.
An agreement to import 160 MW of power from NTPC’s Tripura center was signed in 2016. The five-year contract ends in 2021. It was later renewed for another five years. The contract will expire in 2026. And power started coming from Adani’s Jharkhand center last year. The 25-year contract will expire in 2048.