October 07, 2008

Bangladesh seeks USD 500 million loan from ADB

The International News reported that Bangladesh has sought nearly USD 500 million in loans from Asian Development Bank to install 2 power plants with the total capacity of 175 MW.

An official of government’s power division said that a power plant with 50 MW capacity would be set up at the Karnaphuli hydroelectric plant in Chittagong and another will be installed at Barapukuria in Dinajpur district with a 125 MW capacity. He added that the funds will also be used for installing and upgrading transmission and distribution networks.

The official said that "Often we are unable to transmit and distribute the electricity to the users due to very weak and age old system, so we need to upgrade it. We will require nearly USD 1 billion to upgrade transmission and distribution networks systems when the power generation capacity will be at 8,000 MW in 2012."

Bangladesh plans to raise its electricity generating capacity to 8,000 MW from the existing capacity of up to 4,000 MW. Bangladesh’s only hydro electric power plant in Kaptai has 5 units with 50 MW power generation capacity each but at the moment all the units are able to produce less than 200 MW of electricity as some of them are very old. The coal based Barapukuria plant has two units with 125 MW capacity each.

It may be noted that Asian Development Bank provided USD 465 million in 2007 to Bangladesh under the Sustainable Power Sector Development Program. At present Bangladesh faces up to 1,500 MW of electricity shortages daily.