The Hindu Business Line : Chinese cos bid for Bengal projects

CHINESE companies are in the race for bagging contracts for implementing three power projects in West Bengal totalling an investment of about Rs 4,000 crore.

The West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd (WBPDCL) and the Durgapur Projects Ltd (DPL), two State-owned undertakings, which owns these projects had floated global bids for these projects, which envisages a capacity addition of 960 MW.

Tongfang Electric Corporation of China has bid for two of the projects - the 500 MW Sagardighi Thermal Power Project (STPP) and the 210 MW project for a seventh unit of the DPL.

The other project which has evinced interest from China is the 250 MW expansion project at Santaldih which is also run by WBPDCL. In this case, the company is CMEC Corporation.

The process of evaluation of these tenders is now on and a decision is expected to be taken soon. Letters of Award are likely to be distributed by July 15, sources said.

The projects are to be financed by the Power Finance Corporation which is extending concessional finance under the Union Power Ministry's Accelerated Power Generation and Supply Programme (APGSP).

The PFC had laid down the condition that the concessional rate of finance of 8.5 per cent would be available for these projects only if the letters of award were given by June, and the projects are commissioned by end of the 10th Plan period.

However, the polling process delayed the process, and now the orders are likely to be awarded only around July 15, sources said, adding that assurances have been received that this will not jeopardise the incentives given to these three projects by the way of concessional finance.

"The decision to extend the deadline was taken on the basis of appeals made by power agencies across the country, all of whom faced similar problems," a senior WBPDCL official said.

Sources said that the Rs 100 crore savings that is likely to result from this concessional finance would be reflected in a reduced tariff. Against the Rs 2.22 paise per unit tariff projected for these units in the detailed project report, the actual tariff might work out to about Rs 2.09.

The WBPDCL, which meets 60 per cent of the State's energy demand, is now trying to augment its capacity by implementing the coal-cum-gas based green-field project at Sagardighi in Murhidabad and two brown-field expansion projects at Santaldih and Purulia and in Bakreswar in Birbhum which is being financed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.