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The Board of Investment and officials of Tata Group are likely to discuss an investment proposal by the Indian business giant Sunday, a senior official said, reports bdnews24.com
"A meeting with Tata officials is scheduled for Sunday," BoI executive chairman Md Kamaluddin Ahmed told bdnews24.com Friday.
A senior official of the energy ministry, asking not to be named, said officials of the Energy Division would also be present at the meeting.
Commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman on April 29 told reporters that Tata was still hopeful of investment in Bangladesh.
After a meeting with Tata Group's Bangladesh representative Manjer Hossain, the adviser said Tata wanted to have talks with Bangladesh government.
Tata signed a memorandum of understanding with Bangladesh in 2004 on a $2 billion investment. Later the proposal was hiked to $3 billion.
Tata's investment proposal includes a 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power plant and a 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant.
Also on the cards was a fertiliser plant with a one million-tonne a year capacity and a 2.4 million-tonne steel mill in Ishwardi.
Dhaka had earlier rejected Tata's initial 2004 offer to buy gas at a fixed rate of $1.10 per unit over a 20-year period from the government.
Later, in April 2006, Tata came up with a new proposal that offered to pay $3.10 per thousand cubic feet (TCF) of gas for its fertiliser plant.
The revised deal also included a proposal to pay $2.60 per TCF for the steel plant's power supply. However, the plan remained pegged to a 20-year guarantee to supply natural gas to the projects.
Tata in July 2006 suspended work on investment because of dithering by the government.
Finance adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam on Oct 03 last year said the caretaker administration was not in a position to approve or reject the Tata proposal.
Burma rejects need for foreign aid workers, UN blasts regime(DC pic13)
Burma has rejected the need for foreign aid workers to help with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis and has turned back a rescue team today, prompting a furious response from the UN and the international community, report agency.
Despite the increasing momentum of the disaster, the junta said today that the best way the world could help its nation was to just send in material rather than personnel.
The regime then urged its citizens to vote for an army-drafted constitution in Saturday's referendum that made no mention of the estimated 1.5 million people clinging to survival a week after the cyclone.
“Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment,” a government-run newspaper said.
It added: “But at present Myanmar is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources.”
The UN expressed astonishment at the junta’s resistance to foreign help, which it said was “unprecedented” in the history of humanitarian relief.
Paul Risley, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme in Bangkok, said
there was no hope of acquiring visas in Bangkok until Monday because the embassy had closed for a Thai holiday.
“The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts,” Mr Risley said.
Meanwhile a virtual army of relief groups is grouping in Thailand, poised to rush into Burma as soon as permission is granted.
Earlier, one relief flight was sent back after landing in Rangoon from Qatar because it carried a search and rescue team and media who had not received permission to enter the country.
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