Indian industrialist Gautam Adani arrives in Bangladesh; meets PM Hasina

July 15, 2023 12:44 pm

Dhaka: Indian billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani, the founder and chairman of Adani Group, came to Bangladesh on Saturday and met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her Ganabhaban office.

In a tweet, he wrote, “Honoured to have met Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina on full load commencement and handover of the 1600 MW Ultra Super Critical Godda Power Plant. I salute the dedicated teams from India and Bangladesh who braved Covid to commission the plant in record time of three-and-a-half years.”

Honoured to have met Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina on full load commencement and handover of the 1600 MW Ultra Super Critical Godda Power Plant. I salute the dedicated teams from India and Bangladesh who braved Covid to commission the plant in record time of three-and-a-half years. pic.twitter.com/liwZTKlBDG

— Gautam Adani (@gautam_adani) July 15, 2023

On 7 April, Bangladesh began receiving electricity from India’s Adani Group on a commercial basis under a 25-year power purchase agreement from unit-1 of the Adani Godda 1,600MW thermal plant.

The first unit of the Godda plant has the capacity to generate around 750MW of electricity, but the plant is currently ready to supply around 660MW, according to sources.

A fault in the transmission line, following Cyclone Mocha, disrupted supply on 7 June.

Earlier on 9 March, the first unit of Adani’s Godda 1,600MW Thermal Power Plant was synchronised with the transmission line of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.

The Adani Group faced controversy when it requested a power supply order from Bangladesh, which BPDB officials found to be unusually high compared to the cost of coal with the same heating value used in the Payra 1,320MW Thermal Power Plant built in Patuakhali of Barishal.

In a statement issued on 2 April this year, Adani Bangladesh officials, however, refuted the claims, stating that the cost of their power plant electricity would not be higher than that of other coal plants in Bangladesh, including Payra, Rampal, and Matarbari thermal power plants.

Local and international energy think tanks, including the Center for Policy Dialogue and the USA-based Institute of Energy and Economic Financial Analysis (IEEFA), however, found that the cost of the Adani Power Plant will be an expensive source for Bangladesh.

The tariff for power sold from the Godda plant to the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) will be almost double the initial expectation, notes a report released on 13 December 2022 from its Australian office.

Bangladesh is importing 1,160MW of electricity from India’s eastern and western regions through two cross-border lines.

According to the contract inked in 2017, Adani Power was supposed to supply 1,496 MW of electricity for 25 years from December 2021.

Due to the pandemic, however, the project completion was delayed and rescheduled for December 2022.