Bangladesh's Summit Group plans to invest $2.5 billion over the next five years to grow its electricity generation business in the South Asian nation where supply has been insufficient for the last decade, Chairman Muhammad Aziz Khan said on Thursday. Bangladesh's current electricity generation capacity is some 10,000 megawatts and roughly 30 percent of its population of 160 million people are still without electricity.
"Summit plans to build three combined cycle power plants with capacities of between 500 and 600 megawatts in three places," said Khan, who heads the privately-held conglomerate, which runs businesses ranging from shipping to communications.
Khan said Summit also plans to engage a liquefied natural gas storage and regasification vessel based off the coast of Moheshkhali island in the Bay of Bengal, so that the company can import gas to fuel its plants that will begin operations between 2020 and 2021.
The plan, Khan noted, dovetails with the government's own goal of boosting domestic generation capacity to 24,000 MW by 2021. Summit itself currently has about 1,500 MW of generation capacity and it generates roughly 15 percent of the country's overall output.
Summit has formed a new Singapore based entity named Power International Private Ltd to drive these projects, along with backing from the International Finance Corp (IFC), which will be making a $175.5 million equity investment in the new entity. "IFC, along with other co-investors, will help Summit Group add significant electricity-generation capacity to Bangladesh's national grid," said Wendy Werner, IFC's head for Bangladesh in a statement.