Despite an improvement in payment, the government still owes $1.5 billion to the private power plant operators for purchase of electricity, according to official sources.
The sources confirmed this week that the state-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), the single buyer on behalf of the government, partially cleared the payments until February last.
“We have not received any payment against the electricity purchase bills of March till the current month,” said Imran Karim, president of the Bangladesh Independent Power Producers’ Association (Bippa), the representative body of the private power producers.
“Some of us received the highest 60 percent of the payments against the bills of February,” he told UNB.
He hoped that there would be a major breakthrough in bill settlements soon as their persuasion continued at the highest policy-making level.
The BPDB usually purchases electricity worth Tk 4,000 crore per month.
Now, the payments against the bills of four months — March, April, May and June — are to be cleared. In addition, payments of some partial bills of February have also not been cleared.
By this calculation, the total amount of the pending bills will be over $1.5 billion, said Imran, also the director of Confidence Group, which owns a number of power plants.
The BPDB has been facing a cash crunch for the last few months which forced it to move a proposal to Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) to raise the electricity price at retail level.
The energy regulator is yet to make any decision though it recently held a public hearing on the issue.
The BPDB, however, disagreed with the calculations done by Bippa saying that it normally takes 45 days to clear a bill payment after submission.
“If the due payment is calculated this way, the amount will be equivalent for two and a half months,” said Saiful Hasan Chowdhury, director of public relations of the BPDB.
He said BPDB has cleared most of the payments against the bills of February.
BPDB documents show that the government has to spend a total of Tk 71,878 crore in the FY2021-22 for power production, of which Tk 44,434 crore will be spent for purchasing electricity from the private sector.
Of this amount, Tk 37,963 crore will be required for purchasing electricity from the independent power producers (IPP) and small IPP plants in the private sector, which produces 38 percent (8,807 MW) of the total generation.
Bippa leaders said the delay in payment is not the only problem that the private power producers are facing.
“The rising price of US dollars, unavailability of the green backs with banks and paying penalties for delayed payment to foreign lenders and equipment suppliers have been the major problems,” said the Bippa president.
