By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : India and Sri Lanka Wednesday agreed on a timetable to build a 500 MW coal-fired power plant in Veloor, near Nilaweli, in the eastern Sri Lankan district of Trincomalee.
The power plant, which is to cost $250 million, will be a joint venture between the Indian power utility giant, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), and the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB).
The first of the two 250 MW units will be commissioned by April 2012, and the second in July that year, according to an agreement signed here.
The signatories to the timetable were NTPC Director (Transmission) R.K. Jain and CEB Additional General Manager (Transmission) R.J. Gunawardene.
The ceremony was presided over by the visiting Indian Commerce Minister Jairam Ramesh and Sri Lankan Power Minister W.D.J. Seneviratne.
As per the timetable, a joint venture agreement between NTPC and CEB will be signed in April this year. The same month, the NTPC will be given the contract to do the feasibility report. The power purchase agreement will be inked in August.
The issue of transportation of coal will be settled by December and the award of the main plant contract will be announced in June 2009.
“The project for which a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was signed in December 2006, is behind schedule by an year. Therefore, India is keen on expediting it,” Ramesh said.
There is still a lingering controversy over the location of the jetty for the imported coal. While Sri Lankan Power Minister Seneviratne said it would be located in Sampur, an area recently captured from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Ramesh said the whole logistics of coal transportation would be gone into by a team.
India and Sri Lanka also agreed to study the possibility of integrating the power grids of the two countries. The southern Indian power grid and the Sri Lankan grid would be integrated and talks for this would take place in New Delhi next week, Ramesh said.
The feasibility of this project would be studied with an outlay of $3 million. The two countries would share the cost 50:50. The study will be completed in six to eight months.
India has offered Sri Lanka its expertise in clean energy as per the Kyoto Protocol.
Ramesh told the Sri Lankan power minister that India had a non-conventional, renewable energy capacity of 5,000 MW and that some of the world’s most renowned companies like Suzlon and Veritas were Indian.
India also offered to electrify three villages in Sri Lanka with non-conventional energy as a technology demonstrator and also as a gesture of goodwill.
Talking in more general terms, Ramesh said that he told the Sri Lankan leaders that India believed in laying a strong economic foundation to bilateral relations, and that it was not going to insist on reciprocity in economic matters.
He said that it was in India’s interest to do so because if the country did not go some distance to be accommodative unilaterally, Sri Lanka could explore other options.
The Indian minister called on President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama at the end of his three-day visit to the island.