Five international power companies yesterday submitted their qualification documents with the Power Cell of the power ministry to participate infthe bidding for setting up the 45(rmegawatt Sirajganj Power Project.

Previously the government had floated three rounds of tenders for the same project. One of the tenders was cancelled at its final stage without any reasonable explanation and the third one was cancelled earlier this year on ground of lack of transparency’.

This time, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing technical support for the tender.

Sources said the five companies that submitted qualification docu-ments yesterday are AES Corporation from USA, Korea Electric Power Corporation front South Korea, YTL from Malaysia, a consortium of Powertek Berhad from Malaysia and Siemens Project Ventures GMbH from Germany, and a consortium of Summit Industrial and Mercantile Corp from Bangladesh and GE Energy LLC from USA.

The Power Cell is expected to complete the pre-qualification process within 10 days and move to the next stage of the bidding, the sources said adding that the tender is expected to be floated in the first quarter of next year.

These companies had also participated in the pre-qualification of the 450-MW Bibiyana Power Project in November. In addition, US oil giant Chevron, which is operating the Bibiyana gas field, has also participated in thatbid.

The Power Cell has disqualified YTL for that bid and conditionally qualified Summit-GE and Powertek-Siemens.

Lite last year, the Power Cell had initiated the pre-qualification process for the Sirajganj project and short-listed eight companies early this year.

A number of power ministry officials concerned said the government would have been better off by not cancelling that process as the main tender was yet to be floated.

The tenders for the Sirajganj Power Project have seen a series of bad decisions in the past and the first tender failed to attract satisfactory number of bidders.

The second tender in 2003-04 lacked competition, but bagged an offer from the local Sunimit Power that the World Bank and the ADB were ready to finance.

However in early 2004, then prime minister Khaleda Zia cancelled the tender at its final stage without any explicit reason and sent it for re-tendering.

But the Power Cell that used to be influenced by the instructions from the Hawa Bhaban and lacked competent human resources to handle technical issues could not even manage to launch the third tender until late 2006.