The Bangladeshi government and Indian industrial giant Tata Sunday resumed talks here after a two-year break on its proposed 3 billion U.S. dollars investment in steel, fertilizer, power plant and coal mine projects.
Officials said Tata Sons Executive Director Alan Rosling led the Tata team to the meeting with Bangladesh Board of Investment (BoI).
BOI Executive Chairman Kamal Uddin and the Secretaries to the Energy, Power and Industry Ministries and senior officials were present from the Bangladesh side at the meeting that lasted for nearly four hours.
"It's a positive development that we formally resumed discussion after two years. Lot of developments took place in both sides and we've to look at those developments," Manzer Hossain, Communication Director of Tata told reporters after the meeting.
Asked when the next round of the meeting will be held, Hossain said there could be further engagement after announcement of the coal policy by the Bangladesh government since coal mine project has been incorporated in Tata's proposal.
A draft coal policy was submitted to the Energy Ministry for scrutiny. The ministry is likely to submit it to the Council of Advisers of the caretaker government after two months for consideration.
Tata had formally submitted 2.5 billion U.S. dollars investment proposal in April 2005 and later revised it to around 3 billion U.S. dollars to set up a 1,000 MW power plant, a steel mill with an annual production capacity of 420,000 tons and a fertilizer unit with one million tons capacity in Bangladesh.
Tata's negotiations with the government broke down in July 2006as the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government had kept it for the next elected government for the final decision on the investment proposal.
Bangladeshi President Iajuddin Ahmed declared emergency on Jan.11, 2007 when the violence between two major parties became uncontrollable and postponed the parliamentary elections supposed to be held on Jan 22 last year. Since then the country is under the rule of caretaker government led by Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed.
Source:Xinhua
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