Production at Rampal power plant halted

The production of Bagerhat's Rampal thermal power plant was stopped because of a shortage of coal.

Sources said the situation arise as the authority failed to bring coal due to dollar crisis.

Anwarul Azim, Deputy General Manager at Bangladesh India Friendship Power Company Ltd (BIFPCL) confirmed the matter.

The production of power was halted at 9 am on Saturday (January 14). As a result, the electricity generated from this plant is stopped to the national grid.

However, the authorities cannot say when the production will be normal. There is no scope to resume production without coal.

Earlier on December 16, the first unit of the Bangladesh-India jointly-owned company started producing 660 megawatts of electricity.

Rampal thermal power plant managing director (security and admin) Wali Ullah said the power plant will resume its production after getting coal.

Wishing anonymity an official of the plant said due to the dollar crisis, Bangladesh Bank is delaying approval for opening letters of credit (LC) for coal imports. BIFPCL has written to the Power Department and Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) in this regard. On January 10 and 11, the senior officials of the power plant held several rounds of meetings with various levels of officials of Bangladesh Bank. But there was no solution.