Chris Kay of the Financial Times reports that Indian conglomerate Adani Group has begun to halt flows from a coal-fired plant to Bangladesh over a debt dispute. Kay write:
The Indian conglomerate Adani Group has begun to curb electricity supplies to Bangladesh and threatened to completely shut down power exports as the new government in Dhaka struggles with a backlog of overdue payments.
The infrastructure-focused company owned by billionaire Gautam Adani on Thursday started slashing cross-border electricity flows by as much as half from its 1,600-megawatt capacity Godda coal-fired plant in eastern India, according to data published by Bangladesh’s power grid. […]
Khan said Bangladesh contested the amounts owed to Adani, saying the government had paid the company about $100mn in October, “double of what we’ve been paying in the earlier months”, and had opened a letter of credit for $170mn. He said Bangladesh now owed about $700mn. The amount, however, could rise as Adani continues to supply the country.
The dispute with the influential Indian tycoon, Asia’s second-wealthiest individual, underscores the vulnerabilities of Bangladesh’s economy after the dramatic ousting of authoritarian prime minister Sheikh Hasina by student protesters in August. Hasina fled to India and her current whereabouts are unknown. […]
In a filing last month, the conglomerate’s listed power business said it had been receiving payments from the Bangladesh Power Development Board “on a regular basis” and was “confident of recovering the overdue amount”.
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