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Bdnews24.com India's Tata Group has made it clear that it would not go for any investments in steel if it gets no commitment from the Bangladesh government on uninterrupted gas supply.
"It is as simple as that, if gas is not supplied on a secured basis then we would not go for steel in this country," Allan Roseling, executive director of Tata Sons, promoter of all key companies of the Group, told reporters Sunday after a five-hour closed-door meeting with the Board of Investment (BoI) officials.
He said the meeting was meant to discuss Bangladesh's changing energy supply situation.
"The country's current gas situation is not as we wished it to be," Roseling told reporters later.
He said if the government was unable to provide gas then the Group would not invest in steel in Bangladesh.
"There are a lot of other countries who have gas."
Roseling, however, did not dismiss other investment opportunities.
"The new coal policy, once published, would open up new avenues for further discussions."
"At this stage, the meeting was useful and effective," he added.
Asked whether the Indian conglomerate giant would revise their proposal in the wake of the changing energy supply scenario, Roseling firmly stated that there would be no changes.
BoI executive chairman Md Kamaluddin Ahmed said that they discussed the resource position of Bangladesh.
"We informed them about our demand-supply situation of gas and discussed the upcoming coal policy," he said.
"We neither agreed nor disagreed to provide them gas," added Ahmed.
Tata Group's Bangladesh representative Manjer Hossain, energy secretary Mohammad Mohsin, power secretary Fouzul Kabir Khan, members of BoI were also 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's Bangladesh representative, the adviser said Tata wanted to sit with the government.
Tata signed a memorandum of understanding with Bangladesh in 2004 on a $2 billion investment and later hiked the proposal 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 plant capable to produce one million tonnes of fertiliser a year and a 2.4 million-tonne steel mill in Ishwardi.
The government had earlier rejected Tata's initial offer to buy gas at a fixed rate of $1.10 per unit over a 20-year period.
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.
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