India's Adani slashes electricity to Bangladesh: power officials

DHAKA: Indian conglomerate Adani has slashed cross-border electricity supply to Bangladesh by half due to some $850 million in unpaid bills, power officials said Sunday, with Dhaka scrambling to boost production to stem blackouts.

“We are trying to meet the gap by running other plants,” Rezaul Karim, chairman of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), told AFP on Sunday.

Adani’s coal-fired Godda plant in India’s Jharkhand state — a $2 billion project including transmission lines that opened last year — usually supplies between seven to 10 percent of Bangladesh’s baseload power demand of 13 GW.

But Adani had warned Dhaka in September to settle its bills, which had surged to around $850 million.

At the time, Adani called it an “unsustainable situation, where we are meeting not only our supply commitments but also those to our lenders and suppliers, despite rising receivables”.

There was no immediate comment from Adani on Sunday.

Bangladesh, a nation of some 170 million people, is struggling to find dollars to make the payments.

Its new leaders are focused on the political fallout of a student-led revolution in August that toppled autocratic ex-leader and close Indian ally Sheikh Hasina.

“We are discussing the issue with them (Adani) and informed them that it is not possible to make the total payment in a single month,” Karim added. “But we are trying to increase the payment size gradually”.

Karim said Bangladesh paid $97 million to Adani in October, which was “higher than the previous three months’ payment”.

Demand is usually lower in November, when Bangladesh enters a relatively cooler period after months of blistering heat when consumers rely on energy-hungry air conditioners to keep cool.

On Friday, Adani’s Godda plant supplied 724 megawatts, against the installed capacity of 1,496 MW, with Bangladesh facing around 1,680 MW of load shedding.