Upper Karnali power to Bangladesh

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    Apr 10, 2018-GMR Energy, the Indian developer of the Upper Karnali Hydropower Project, has made an offer to Bangladesh to sell energy from the plant at 10 cents per unit, a government official said.

    GMR officials are visiting Bangladesh to negotiate the power purchase rate for the electricity that will be produced by the project, a GMR source said.

    The source told the Post that there was a high chance an agreement would be reached on the price for the energy to be sold to Bangladesh from the 900 MW plant to be built in western Nepal.

    “We will probably sign a ‘term sheet’ with the Bangladeshi government to sell 500 MW of electricity via NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam (NVVN) of India,” said the source.

    “A final agreement will be signed after the rate and conditions mentioned in the ‘term sheet’ are approved by the Bangladesh Power Development Board.”

    A term sheet is a nonbinding agreement setting forth the basic terms and conditions which will serve as a template to develop a detailed legally binding agreement in the future. “During the negotiations, the power purchase rate can be bargained down to 9 cents per unit,” said the source.

    Power hungry Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India’s NVVN to import electricity from the Upper Karnali scheme via India during Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India in April 2017. As Indian laws don’t allow private developers to export electricity produced in third countries over Indian transmission lines, Bangladesh signed an MoU with the state-owned cross-border electricity trading agency while GMR was a witness.

    GMR officials are visiting Bangladesh to negotiate the power purchase rate for the electricity that will be produced by the project, a GMR source said.

    Source: The Kathmandu Post