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The authorities are expected to start large-scale coal import by August this year to run US$ 1.98 billion Payra power plant in Patuakhaili in southern Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh-China Power Company Limited (BCPCL), the executing agency of the 1,320 megawatt (MW) thermal power plant, would import annually around 4.0 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia to run the facility.
Bangladesh did not import large quantity of coal before as its major requirement was being met by the country's lone-operational Barapukuria coalmine.
The mine has an annual capacity to extract around 1.0 million tonnes of coal.
The Payra coal-fired power plant would be the first to be run on imported coal.
"We've already initiated a deal to import coal from an Indonesian supplier to import coal to run the power plant," the power company's managing director AM Khorshedul Alam told the FE on Tuesday.
The final coal purchase deal with the Indonesian firm would be inked after vetting from the law ministry, he said.
Mr Alam, however, refused to disclose the coal price as the deal was not finalised yet.
He, however, said that the coal import price would be linked with that of the international market.
The company's top executive expressed the hope that the first unit having 660 MW capacity would be operational by August 2019 and the second one having the similar capacity by February 2020.
The company is a 50:50 joint venture between Bangladesh's North-West Power Generation Company Ltd (NWPGCL) and China's China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC).
The proposed power plant is some 320 kilometers south of Dhaka and is close to the proposed Payra sea port. The joint venture would provide 20 per cent equity to implement the power plant project and the remaining 80 per cent is being sourced as loan from Exim Bank of China.
The power plant would require around 12,000 tonnes of coal daily to generate electricity.
The government has issued a US$ 1.0 billion worth of state guarantee in favour of the Chinese loan.
The government has also allocated 998.77 acres of land to the NWPGCL for implementing the project on a turnkey basis by using eco-friendly ultra super critical technology.
Currently, the country has five coalmines, but coal extraction is limited to only one coalmine at Barapukuria in Dinajpur, utilising the underground coalmining method.
The Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd (BCMCL) is annually extracting around 1.0 million tonnes of coal, most of which is consumed by the nearby Barapukuria thermal power plant.
According to the Power System Master Plan, the government has a plan to generate around 50 per cent of the country's overall electricity from coal. To implement the plan, the government will have to generate around 12,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from coal by 2024, 20,000 MW by 2030, and 30,000 MW by 2041.
But the country now has only three coal-fired power plants having a total generation capacity of only 524 MW.