The Bangladesh Power Development Board has sought permission from the finance ministry to purchase power from India at a rate to be fixed by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission of India.
'We submitted a power purchase proposal from India to the cabinet committee on economic affairs to import 250MW of electricity from India,' a top official of BPDB told the news agency Tuesday.
To meet the country's acute electricity crisis, Bangladesh signed a 35-year power transmission agreement with India on July 26 last year to import 250 megawatt electricity starting from late 2013.
As per the agreement, this amount will be imported from India through installing a station at Baharampur (India)-Bheramara(Bangladesh).
'We are set to sign a final deal with National Thermal Power Corporation of India either by the end of this month or in the first quarter of the next month. So we need to take the final nod from the finance ministry,' he added.
The Power Grid Company of Bangladesh in March last signed a deed agreement with Siemens Germany to construct a 27-kilometre grid interconnection between Bangladesh and India to import electricity.
This line would be constructed as per the memorandum of understanding signed by Bangladesh and India on exchange of power during the Delhi visit of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, in January 2010.
The two countries inked another MoU in September last year in New Delhi for a Joint Venture Agreement and later a joint steering committee was formed to oversee the exchange of power.
Source : New Age
