Top policymakers briefed about outcome of meeting with Adani on coal pricing

News Desk :
The government’s top policy makers on power have been briefed about the outcome of a meeting the state-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board has recently held with a visiting team of Adani Group to discuss the coal pricing issue under its power purchase deal with the Indian conglomerate.
According to official sources on Tuesday, the officials of the BPDB briefed Prime Minister’s Energy Advisor Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury and other top policymakers about the outcomes of the meeting with Adani.
“BPDB chairman Mahbubur Rahman and some top officials went to the office of the advisor at the PMO in the morning and stayed there until 4 pm on Tuesday”, a source said, reports UNB.
However, none of the officials of the BPDB was willing to share any detail on the issue.
Tawfiq-e-Elahi also could not be reached over mobile phone for his comment.
A 5-member team from the Adani Group came to Dhaka on Thursday last and held a meeting with the BPDB top officials to resolve the issues on “coal pricing mechanism of the power purchase agreement (PPA)”.
A chief executive and a chief procurement officer of Adani were among the 5-member delegation while one official from Adani’s Dhaka office also joined the meeting that lasted more than an hour, said the source without mentioning their names.
A number of BPDB officials including the member (company affairs) and the member (finance) were present at the meeting, it said.
The issues discussed at the meeting were kept secret citing sensitivity on both sides.
Bangladesh sources said both the sides heard each other and presented their respective points.
“But both sides expressed interest to continue discussion,” said the sources, adding that Adani’s representative informed them that they would communicate BPDB’s stance on the coal pricing mechanism of the PPA to their top management and they will sit in more follow-up meetings.