340 MW of power from Tripura likely soon

The Joint Working Committee (JWC) on power sector cooperation between Bangladesh and India has reached a decision to allocate another 340MW of electricity for Bangladesh to serve its national grid from Indian state of Tripura by mid 2020.
"We sat today (Sunday) to finalise the proposal to import another 340MW of electricity from Tripura. Two technical committees has been working on the issues for more than one year," a senior official of the Power Division told the Daily observer on Sunday following the meeting held at a local hotel in Dhaka.
Ahmed Kaikaus, Power Secretary of Bangladesh, led the Bangladesh side while Indian Power Secretary SC Garg led the Indian side in the meeting.
"However, the meeting failed to reach any consensus over the tariff issue," the official said. Bangladesh is now importing 160MW of electricity from India through this grid line.
Following the meeting in Dhaka, the senior officials of the two countries flew to Rampal to conduct the Board Meeting of the Maitree Super Tarmal Power Project at Rampal popularly known as Rampal Power project.
"We focused on expediting the ongoing work of Rampal Power project as per schedule (by this time it has been shifted several times)," official said.
The JWC also discussed the cross border energy trade between Bangladesh-India-Nepal and Bhutan and decided to sign a tri-party MoU between Bangladesh-India-Bhutan to trade hydro electricity from Bhutan.
They also discussed importing 340MW more electricity through Surjyamani-Cumilla North Link under government to government (G2G) from NTPC power centres, proposed Katihar-Parbatipur-Barapukuria-Boranagar 765 kv grid interconnection and to construct back-to-back HVDC sub-station at Cumilla aiming at importing more power through Baharampur-Bheramar 400-kv 2nd transmission line and Surjyamani-Cumilla North Link.
They also discussed waving all types of CD, tax and VAT on the import of power from India.
"The meeting discussed the fate of Indian private sector's involvement here.  Reliance and Shapoorji Palonji, two major Indian groups have submitted proposals to set up natural gas-based power stations in Bangladesh.
Adani group has already expressed their interest to invest in a coal power project here," the official added.