Govt disburses Tk927cr

The government has disbursed Tk 927 crore for operational expenses of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project for the current 2022-23 fiscal year amid complications over loan repayment.

The Finance Division informed the Ministry of Science and Technology about the disbursement through a letter on Tuesday.

Officials of the Science and Technology Ministry said that all funds allocated for this project in the current fiscal year have been distributed through this latest disbursement. The local contractors, working in the project being appointed by ROSATOM, the state-owned nuclear company of Russia, will receive the money before Eid.

As a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US imposed sanctions on Russia last year. As a result, the country was excluded from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), an international financial transaction medium. Since then, repayment of instalments of Bangladesh’s loan and payment of salaries to foreigners, especially residents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan working in the RNPP project, have stopped.

In January last, Bangladesh Bank paid the salaries of some officials and workers through Sonali Bank’s branch in China. At present, at the behest of Russia, the government has started paying the salaries of foreign employees of RNPP in Bangladeshi currency.

It should be noted that Russia’s Vnesheconombank or VEB is among the institutions excluded from SWIFT. Sonali Bank transacts the money for this project through the VEB, Russia’s agent in financing RNPP in Bangladesh.

Sources said RNPP’s loan repayment instalments of two years are still deposited in the state-owned Sonali Bank as transactions through SWIFT had stopped. On condition of anonymity, an Economic Relations Division (ERD) official told The Business Post that repaying the RNPP loan to Russia in Chinese yuan has been discussed, but the finance ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office are yet to give their final consent in this regard.

In the current financial year, the allocations for RNPP loan repayment and operation expenses were respectively Tk 13,395.6 crore and Tk 12,000 crore.

However, in the revised budget, the loan repayment allocation was reduced to Tk 11,139.15 crore and the operation expenses to Tk 9,600 crore. The estimated cost of the RNPP project is Tk 1,32,825 crore.