Sources said the proposal will be sent to the committee next week for approval.

The ministry and the Power Cell had tried to resist this irregular project for long but the 'alternative centre of power' of the ruling BNP, which is backing this deal, had thrown its weight behind the project to get it approved before expiry of the tenure of the present government.

The summary tried to show that awarding of the contract to US-Irish joint venture Cadogan-Manning Group (CMG), which has no experience in power projects, will make this project less costly than the AES Meghnaghat-1 power project.

The CMG's 22-year levelised offer for power is US 2.78 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is one cent lower than in the case of the 1998 AES Meghnaghat project.

But the summary did not mention some vital financial aspects of the AES project that include AES paid the PDB $ 37 million upfront instead of giving free electricity of equal amount, plus $5 million for land and $12 million for building an inter-connection transfer facility (ITF). These make the AES deal much less costly while the ITF built by AES will be used by the Meghnaghat-2 and 3 power plants in future.

Experts noted that on 'net present value' (NPV) calculation of real tariff, the CMG tariff would be almost double that of the AES scheme.

Though the AES paid in cash for 1,395 million kWh of free electricity before its commercial operation started in 2002, the power ministry in its proposal says the Meghnaghat-1 project did not have any such provision, while the CMG will be giving 1,395 million kWh of free electricity.

Till date, the government did not float any tender for this power project, yet the power ministry believes that an unsolicited deal with the CMG is justified. Again, the ministry remains totally silent on the fact that the CMG did not furnish its bid bond, whereas in all other power deals, bid bond submission is mandatory.

The ministry's proposal itself admits that the CMG will not have any equity in the project. The Private Sector Power Generation Policy demands the contractor must have a minimum 20 percent stake in the project. The CMG proposes that the project will be financed 100 percent by Stone and Youngberg and Eagle Financial Group, USA, because of CMG's 'Goodwill'. And the ministry upholds such claims.

The ministry's summary highlighted that while established US power company AES took three years to build the Meghnaghat-1 power project, the CMG will be able to do it in two years.

It notes that the CMG has proposed names of 'world famous' contractors for supply, design and engineering work for its project.

The proposal is allowing the CMG to change power plant configuration whereas the government in the past rejected any proposal for changing plant configuration in the unsolicited negotiation with Japanese Marubeni for Meghnaghat- 2 project in 2001 and for Sirajganj 450 MW project bidding. The CMG is proposing three gas turbines instead of two.

"Since it was an unsolicited offer in which CMG did not go through any pre-qualification process, the company should be subject to post-qualification using the same pre-qualification criteria as for Meghnaghat-1 or Meghnaghat-2 bids," says a power project expert.

To show how cheap the CMG's tariff offer is, the ministry has given a comparison table of its tariff with that of the PDB's Fenchuganj 90 MW and Siddhirganj 210 MW plants.

The power expert says this comparison should have taken place with the AES Meghnaghat and Haripur projects, which have similar power generation capacity. Generally, higher capacity implies more economies and lower tariff.

The power ministry had prepared the proposal in June but with the change of the state minister concerned, the proposal underwent revision.

State Minister for Power Anwarul Kabir Talukder told The Daily Star that he would not recommend any deal that goes against the interest of the country.

The BNP-led alliance government last year awarded the deal for Meghnaghat-2 plant to local Orion and the UAE-based Belhasa. But these incompetent companies failed to ensure the project finance even after one year though Belhasa has more money than the CMG.

The CMG has been pushing this opaque deal since August 11, 2004. At that time, the Power Cell had said the CMG proposal was not following any process and it lacked a plan.

The CMG is a joint-venture between an Irish company named Cadogan Engineering, and Manning Industries from Texas, USA. Cadogan Consultants Ltd. was formed by a management buy-out of Rendel Palmer & Tritton (Scotland) Ltd. in 1997. Manning Industries is a company based in Texas mainly involved in retrofitting used equipment.

On April 25, last year, the parliamentary standing committee on energy and power ministry had asked the ministry to cancel the shady process with the CMG as it was hurting democratic image of the government, and to float an international tender.

Interestingly, under pressure from the 'alternative centre of power', the standing committee at its next meeting withdrew its stand on this matter.

In May, the national committee for protection of oil and gas resources served a legal notice on the government demanding cancellation of the process of awarding any contract based on unsolicited proposal of the CMG. The government ignored the notice.