Adani fully restores power supply to Bangladesh as payments resume

Adani Power Ltd has resumed full electricity supply to Bangladesh, four months after halving the feed over unpaid dues.

"We're making regular payments to Adani and receiving power as per our requirements," Rezaul Karim, chairman of Bangladesh Power Development Board, told Bloomberg today (27 March).

He, however, didn't specify the quantum of payments and whether past arrears have been cleared.

Data from the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) shows Adani increased power supply more than two weeks ago, Bloomberg reports.

Earlier, Adani had halved supply from its 1,600 megawatt coal-fired plant in India's Jharkhand state in November after a series of missed payments by Dhaka.

A representative of the Adani Group did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Adani, which signed a 25-year contract under former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2017, has been supplying power from its $2 billion plant in India's Jharkhand state. The plant, with two units each of 800 megawatts capacity, sells exclusively to Bangladesh.

The Indian company halved its supply to Bangladesh on 31 October due to payment delays as Bangladesh battled a foreign exchange shortage. This led to the shutdown of one unit on 1 November, resulting in the plant operating at about 42% capacity.

Subsequently, Bangladesh told Adani to keep supplying only half the power.

The state-run BPDB said it had been paying $85 million a month to Adani to clear outstanding dues and has now told the company to resume supply from the second unit.

In December, an Adani source said BPDB owed the company about $900 million, while Rezaul Karim said at the time the amount was only about $650 million.

The pricing dispute revolves around how power tariffs are calculated, with the 2017 agreement pricing off an average of two indices. Adani's power costs Bangladesh about 55% more than the average of all Indian power sold to Dhaka, Reuters has reported.