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CG to consider its last power bid

Sharier Khan
With some success and some failure in its bag in the last two years, the cabinet purchase committee of the caretaker government this week will consider approval of its last power scheme -- the 50-megawatt Sikalbaha rental power project.
While the tender for the rental project was held in mid-October amid some strict guidelines to ensure a controversy-free bidding process, recommendation of the bid is being placed before the cabinet committee along with some unanswered questions, sources say.
"But these could have been avoided," comments an official.
In its recommendation, the power ministry suggested awarding the three-year rental scheme to a joint venture led by Royce Power Engineering Ltd of Hong Kong with local companies Asian Entech Power Corporation and Shasha Denims Ltd that proposed to set up the plant using cheap but environmentally hostile Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO).
Last week the cabinet committee cancelled the 450mw Bibiyana power project bid on ground of high power tariff offer, although the ministry thought that the price offer by Malaysian-Korean
consortium Powertek was justified. This cancellation marks the caretaker government's complete failure in making any progress with any large-scale private power projects.
The power ministry under the caretaker administration wanted to float three tenders for large-scale power projects --the 450mw Sirajganj, 450mw Meghnaghat-3 and 450mw Bibiyana power projects.
The Sirajganj and Meghnaghat-3 tenders were shelved following suggestions by the International Finance Corporation (1FC), which wanted a brand
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new,project -- Bibiyana -- to be floated first.
Bibiyana project was based on gas supplies from the Bibiyana gas field developed by the US company Chevron.
Earlier this year, the Power Cell awarded four rental power projects totalling 170mw to inexperienced Energy Prima, which is owned by the Hosaf Group.
These plants were supposed to come into operation within 120 days of agreement or in mid-May. But none of these projects could go online as per schedule.
Of these four, Energy Prima launched a 50mw plant in Kumargaon from July and another 50mw Shajibazar plant from early November. But it could neither launch its 20mw Bogra plant nor the 50mw Fenchuganj power plant. Energy Prima is now fighting a legal battle to avoid payment of liquidated damage to the government for its failure.
A British company Aggreko installed a 40mw power plant in Khulna 15 days behind schedule in June, while another company Kaltimax that was supposed to launch a 34 5mw plant in Bhola in May made almost no progress till date.
Local Precision Energy was given the contract to install a
60mw plant on rental by September but made almost no headway.
Meanwhile, local company GBB after a lot of delay implemented a 20mw plant in Bogra on a 15-year rental term.
Another company Doreen Power is making surprising progress in launching a 22mw power plant in Tangail (15 years contract) this month - two months ahead of schedule.
This company is also making fast progress with 22mw Feni and 22mw Narsingdi 15-year rental power projects.
In October, the Power Cell sought proposal for the 50mw Sikalbaha plant -- to be expanded to lOOmw capacity in future. 1 hough rental power is costlier than conventionally produced power, this project was emphasised considering severe power crisis in Chittagong.
The Cell floated the tender seeking offer for both diesel and HFO-based power plants, although price of diesel is much higher than HFO.
"It's because we were not sure if power companies would at all bid for an HFO-based plant, which is costlier than diesel-based plants to install but cheap to run in the long term, " said an official.
Three bidders chose HFO as their fuel and three others diesel. Instead of evaluating
these bids in two categories, the Cell put all the weight on the price of power.
"As a result, the bid of Royce Ltd turned out to be the lowest. But this was really comparing an apple with an orange. Such evaluation destroys bidders' confidence in the long run," he added.
"The Power Cell didn't work on the environmental aspect of HFO. It didn't ask or seek documents from Royce about how the environmental issues will be handled," he observed. "The power ministry's recommendation did not say anything about environment."
Royce Ltd stated that its power generating equipment is 15 years old. The Cell did not inquire if such an old generator would pose any environmental hazard and also did not ask for any environmental plan from the company.
But the ministry argued that the price of diesel was Tk 55 a litre and HFO Tk 30. It also noted that rental plants running on petroleum charge more tariff than the power board's selling price.
At the present rate. PDB will have to be given a subsidy of Tk 21.37 crore each month due to this reason.
Presently, the country’ has only one HFO-based power plant -- the Khulna UOmw
Summit power plant. Summit spent $8 million extra (not required for diesel-based plants) just to address the environmental problems caused by fuel.
Following press reports earlier this month, the Cell checked back some documents submitted by Royce Power taking help from Bangladeshi mission abroad. These include confirmation that Royce Ltd had supplied 22.6mw rental power equipment to a Chinese company and that the bidder has a liquid fuel fired 55mw generator.
But the Cell hurriedly forgot to check whether the bidder indeed has three years experience in providing at least 20mw power on rental terms or as Independent Power Project developer.
The Cell's over-enthusiasm in recommending Royce Power itself had raised questions back in October.
Whereas no tendering authority completes evaluation of bids within a month, it sent its recommendation in favour of Royce Power on October 19, just three days after bid submission.
This had prompted the power ministry to ask the Cell to review its decision and check back all the claims made by Royce Power.