The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

Five firms have come out as pre-qualified bidders to stake a claim to the proposed 450MW Bibiyana Power Plant project on completion of the evaluation of their pre-qualification bids.

The five pre-qualified bidders are Korea Electric Power Corporation of South Korea, AES Corporation of the USA, Chevron Corporation of the USA, the consortium of Powertek Berhad of Malaysia & Siemens Project Ventures GmbH of Germany, Summit Industrial Mercantile Corporation Limited of Bangladesh, and GE Energy LLC of the USA.

Power Cell, the reform implementation wing of the Power Ministry, today (Tuesday) announced the PQ-assessment results, after scrutinizing the initial offers of a total of six PQ bidders.

Now, the five pre-qualified bidders will be asked to submit the financial and technical offers to the government for final bidding under the Request for Proposal (RfP) format which is expected to take place in the first quarter of next year.

Among the six aspirants, the Malaysia-based YTL Power International failed to qualify in the pre-qualification round of bidding as its statement was found "non-compliant with the pre-qualification criteria", the Power Cell said in a release.

However, the first three of the five pre-qualified bidders-Korea Electric, AES Corporation and Chevron Corporation-were fully pre-qualified while Consortium of Powertek-Siemens and the consortium of Summit-GE have been conditionally selected for the next round.

The Power Cell said the consortium of Powertk-Siemens and the consortium of Summit-GE have conditionally qualified pending their submission within 45 days of the revised financial statements compliant with the International Accounting Standard (IAS).

"The submission of IAS financial statement was a requirement of the qualification package to allow the government to verify the financial strength of the applicants," the Power Cell maintained.

A seven-member tender-evaluation committee, headed by Power Cell director general Abdul Jalil, conducted the PQ evaluation.

As per the bidding proposal, the finally winning private sponsor will have to implement the Bibiyana Power project on Build-Own-Operate (BOO) basis as independent power producer (IPP) in accordance with the Private Sector Power Generation Policy 2004.

The state-owned Power Development Board (PDB) will purchase electricity from the plant for about 22 years.

Earlier, the Power Ministry had initiated move for setting up three large-scale IPP projects: 450MW Sirajganj plant, 450MW Meghnaghat phase-III plant and the 450MW Bibiyana.

But, a Power Ministry source said among the three, they are giving priority to Bibiyana project as natural gas is available for the project nearby for the plant.

Bibiyana power plant will be installed at a location closed to the existing Bibiyana gas field in Habiganj. The Bibiyana Field has abundant surplus natural gas, which, for lack of infrastructure, will remain unutilized, industry-insiders believe.

Bibiyana is the first large-scale power project for which the caretaker government initiated the physical move to implement project to resolve a nagging power crisis.

The World Bank has made a commitment to finance the project while its private-sector window-the International Finance Corporation (IFC)--has been working as an advisor to assist the Power Cell in dealing with the tender process.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has promised to finance the private sponsor to install the Sirajganj and Meghnaghat-III plants.

Industry-insiders said such big projects need more than three years time for implementation after tendering. "Even if the projects are given special care, those are unlikely to come into operation before 2010," said an executive of a private power company.