Chowdhury: Upbeat

New Delhi, April 15: NTPC Ltd, the state-run electricity generator, today said its overseas foray was on course.

Work on a 1,320 megawatt (MW) plant in Khulna, Bangladesh, will start soon, while a deal for a plant in Sri Lanka will be concluded within a week.

“While the Bangladesh project will start this year, the Sri Lankan power project will be wrapped up over this week,” NTPC chairman and managing director Arup Roy Choudhury told The Telegraph.

The Khulna plant, which will run on imported coal, will be the largest in the neighbouring country. There were apprehensions about the project in the wake of agitations by various lobbies and the Opposition in Bangladesh.

However, Roy Choudhury is confident of beginning the work on schedule and said issues such as power purchase agreements would be settled by the Bangladesh Power Development Board, the joint venture partner.

“We have nothing to do with the power tariff for Khulna, we are only building the plant for them,” he said.

The 2x660MW plant will use high-quality coal from Indonesia or Australia.

Meanwhile, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTPC, has signed a power purchase agreement for supplying 250MW to Bangladesh for 25 years. The Centre will allocate the entire quantity from NTPC projects in India.

NTPC and the Bangladesh Power Development Board are also keen on another 1,320MW project in Chittagong. However, NTPC has not yet agreed on the location. “They had shown us the land, but we are not satisfied with it. Something would work out soon,” Roy Choudhury said.

He said a delegation from Sri Lanka would be here this week to wrap up talks on a project in Trincomalee.“We hope to wrap up the project in the next 3-4 days.”

Officials from both sides had recently met to discuss the power purchase and implementation agreements for the 2x250MW imported coal-based project at Sampur.

The negotiations took place despite India’s decision to vote in favour of a US-sponsored resolution censuring Sri Lanka on its human rights violation.