Deal signed with GTC despite graft allegation

Petrobangla, the state-owned corporation, has signed a 'side letter agreement' with the GTC consortium to extract hard rock from Maddhapara Granite Mine, despite having a serious corruption allegation against the consortium.
Since 2014, Petrobangla has engaged GTC, a consortium formed in between Bangladesh-based Germania Corporation Ltd and Belarus-based JSC Trest Shakhtos Petsstroy, to operate the country's lone hard rock mine at Maddhyapara.
In a hasty move, the Maddhapara Board on Wednesday called a board meeting and gave formal approval to the GTC to continue its operation in Bangladesh, Energy Ministry's sources said.
Earlier, the GTC withdrew TK 550 crore against its real bill of TK 300 crore from      Petrobangla. It extracted only 32 lakh tonnes of hard rock from Maddhapara mine in last six years, which was one third of its assigned work.
Petrobangla needs to revise its budget to manage the bill, the Energy Ministry's sources said.
Meanwhile, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) started investigation into the issue from Wednesday.
"Petrobangla allowed the consortium to continue its operation here. I personally asked them not to allow the company once again," State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid told the Daily observer on Wednesday.
He said Petrobangla did not take any initiative (tendering process) to allow other companies to work here.
"Now if we don't continue it will be a great loss for the country and so it happened, the State Minister said adding that an arbitral tribunal had issued a status quo on the overall operations of the mine, which will remain effective until March 04.
Contractor GTC had lodged a complaint before the tribunal over expiry of its tenure, he said.
The contract tenure with GTC expired on February 14 to avoid hassle, the Energy Ministry pushed up the issue on the table of Maddhapara Board and accordingly it signed a 'side letter agreement' which acts as an extension letter of its job with Maddhapara mine, industry's insider said.
Before expiry of its tenure, GTC extracted only about one-third quantity of granite stones to the tune of around 3.75 million tonnes against its contract to extract around 9.2 million tonnes granite stones during the contract period but it received all of its operational bills from Petrobangla for its job.
"It was also an allegation against the officials of the mine that hard rock produced from the Maddhapara with a market value of around Tk 55.24 crore has apparently gone missing�.ACC lodged crime case against its 9 Managing Directors and 13 officials in this connections. It will take time to find out the real thing," a senior official of Petrobangla said.
Books showed that about 3.60 lakh tonnes of hard rock were not found there, officials said due to system loss for years, poor record keeping, hard rock sinking into the ground and the produced rock not being handed over to the company.
An official letter of the company claimed that a staggering 1.06 lakh tonnes of hard rock had either gone down under the clay or got mixed with soil at the company yard over the last 12 years.
Korean company Namnam developed the mine in Parbatipur upazila of Dinajpur and started production under contract with Maddhapara Mine Company.
During its stint at the mine, until 2013, Namnam commercially produced around 15.35 lakh tonnes. The Korean company handed over around 13.08 lakh tonnes to Maddhapara authority.
The officials at the mine are now saying that this discrepancy, a deficit of 2.27 lakh tonnes of rock which is around 14.79 percent of its total production until 2013, was due to weighing error and system loss and that it had not been corrected over the years.
Interestingly, in 2012-2013, Nanman produced 2.81 lakh tonnes and delivered the same to Maddhapara, according to documents.
The mining authority sells boulder rocks, larger than 200 millimeter at US$30 per tonne and crushed rocks, 60 millimeter to 05 mm between $29 and $33 per tonne. However, hard rock dust is being sold at $10 per tonne.