A government agency has made a move to develop more land at Rampal for building a second thermal power plant although the first one of 1,320-megawatt seems trapped in complexities and complaints.
Officials said Friday the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) planned to spend Tk 5.41 billion on land development, and construction of the protection and boundary walls for the second block of Rampal power plant.
“We recently sent a Tk 5.41 billion project proposal to the Planning Commission. If approved, we will start land-development work on the Rampal power-generation-project site,” said a BPDB official.
Meanwhile, the Planning Commission (PC) has expressed its reservation on the land-development project at Rampal and the Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company (BIFPC) Limited was yet to start installation work on its first 1,320MW coal-fired power plant.
“The proposed land-development project does not have any feasibility study. It has not even been included in the cost-benefit ratio and internal rate of return for the project,” said a PC official.
Furthermore, the project proposal failed to describe the purpose of the land development properly, he told the FE, requesting anonymity.
The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) of India and the Bangladesh government-owned BPDB formed joint-venture company BIFPC in January 2012 for installing the coal-fired power plant at Rampal, close by the Sunderbans mangrove-forest range.