Adani thanks PM Hasina during short Dhaka visit
Staff Reporter :
Gautam Adani, the founder and chairman of Adani Group, came to Bangladesh on Saturday on a brief visit to thank Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for full load commencement and handover of the 1600mw coal-fired Godda power plant in the Indian state of Jharkhand.
Gautam Adani landed in Dhaka by his personal aircraft at 10:00am yesterday.
He paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at Ganabhaban around 11:00pm and left Dhaka by the same aircraft around 1:15pm.
In a tweet, he wrote, “Honored 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 a record time of three-and-a-half years.”
Regarding the visit of the founder and chairman of Adani Group, state minister for power, energy and mineral resource Nasrul Hamid said Gautam Adani came to Dhaka to thank Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on the full load commencement of the Godda power 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.
The first unit started commercial power production on 6 April and the second unit on 25 June.
Earlier on 9 March, the first unit of Adani’s Godda 1,600MW Thermal Power Plant was synchronized with the transmission line of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Adani Group in 2017. Under the PPA, the BPDB will purchase electricity from the Godda power plant, owned by Adani Group’s subsidiary Adani Power, for 25 years.
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.
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.
