Bangladesh is building several transmission lines to connect the Rooppur nuclear power plant in Pabna’s Ishurdi to the national grid, with an Indian line of credit funding a major share of the project. The original plan included a 20-kilometre river crossing, which the government scrapped after encountering inflated bid prices, slow financing and restrictive conditions. Officials instead adopted an alternative route that shortened the alignment by about seven kilometres and opened the contract to competitive tender.

Power Grid Bangladesh PLC is erecting six circuits across a mix of 400 kV and 230 kV single- and double-circuit lines to carry Rooppur’s electricity to the national grid. An Indian line of credit was set to cover BDT 82.19 billion of the BDT 109.82 billion total cost, with Power Grid and the government funding the remainder. The river crossing segment, Package-6, was then removed from the credit-financed scope when the lowest bid exceeded project estimates.

Instead, the government is now executing the river crossing separately through the Bangladesh Infrastructure Development Fund along a realigned route that shortens the path by roughly seven kilometres. Officials said opening the contract to competitive tender generated stronger market interest.

A senior Power Grid official told Bonik Barta anonymously that leaving the Indian credit arrangement brought substantial savings. Beyond trimming seven kilometres from the route, he said, removing credit-linked restrictions enabled genuine commercial competition.

The Indian line of credit had required Bangladesh to procure most materials from India, the senior official said. Carving out the river crossing allowed direct equipment imports from other countries, lowering procurement costs and yielding further savings.

Planning Commission sources say the revised cost of the transmission infrastructure project for the Rooppur nuclear plant has been set at BDT 86.51 billion. The project initially had BDT 82.19 billion in Indian financing under a line of credit, but that has now been reduced to BDT 60.23 billion — a BDT 21.95 billion decline. Project officials attribute the reduced cost directly to the river-crossing section being removed from the project.

A senior Planning Commission official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bonik Barta that the Jamuna River crossing route has been shifted from Manikganj to Tangail district. “The river crossing length will be almost halved, and that will reduce the cost,” he said.

The official added that a Project Evaluation Committee meeting had examined the conditions attached to foreign credit alongside other contractual constraints, noting that project costs in Bangladesh rarely fall and describing the reduction as “an exception”.

He noted that officials asked during the meeting whether converting certain sections from double-circuit to single-circuit lines would affect transmission. Project engineers responded that the shorter route would relieve overloading on specific lines while double circuits absorbed heavier loads, confirming that the change would not harm the project.

The original Rooppur–Dhamrai line was designed as a 152-kilometre double-circuit link running through five Manikganj upazilas including Shibaloy and Ghior, with a 13-kilometre river crossing over the Jamuna. Once that segment was dropped from the Indian line of credit facility, planners moved the alignment to Tangail, trimming the route by roughly seven kilometres.

Under the revised development project proposal, the Rooppur–Dhaka 400 kV line shortens from 154 kilometres to 150 kilometres, while the Rooppur–Bogra 400 kV line shrinks from 102 kilometres to 89 kilometres alongside a scaled-back Aminbazar–Kaliakair 400 kV line. The revised plan also converts several double-circuit sections to single-circuit lines and cuts planned bay extensions from 12 to seven.

Power Grid Bangladesh Managing Director Abdur Rashid Khan rejected characterisations of the project as a straightforward cost reduction.

“It’s not exactly that the cost has come down — some savings have been made,” he told Bonik Barta. “Once foreign-exchange losses are taken into account, this isn’t actually a saving.”

Construction of the Rooppur nuclear plant began in April 2018 with an initial completion target of December 2022, a deadline deferred four times following Covid-19 and other disruptions. Work on the river crossing remains unfinished.

Indian firms secured most of the transmission contracts, but slow fund releases hindered the project from the start before the pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war disrupted material supply chains. Progress ground to a near halt when Indian personnel left Bangladesh following the fall of the Awami League government on August 5, 2024, in a mass uprising, though workers have since returned.

Costing BDT 1.38 trillion, Rooppur is the most expensive infrastructure project in Bangladesh’s history, with Russia funding 90 percent (exceeding BDT 1 trillion) of the spending and Rosatom providing technical support. The long-distance transmission lines are designed to carry power from the 2,400-megawatt facility across the country.