In January, the Cabinet Purchase Committee had approved the Power Development Board's (PDB's) arbitrary selection of Harbin's bid and brushed aside a decision of a government review panel formed under the Public Procurement Regulation (PPR) 2003, which opposed the bid.

The review panel in October 2005 had asked the PDB to disqualify the flawed bid of Harbin and negotiate with the two other bidders, based on their lowest price offers.

The government is financing the entire project. Sources said the prime minister was also preparing to 'inaugurate' the project on October 9.

Finance and Planning Minister M Saifur Rahman chaired both the meetings, the purchase committee meeting in January and Ecnec meeting last Wednesday.

Following the January meeting, Saifur told the press, "We have reviewed the report of the independent review committee, it was not proper. The purchase committee has rejected the report. The company [Harbin] that got the deal will do it for Tk 86 crore lower than the next bidder -- why should we pay more?"

Following Wednesday's meeting, Saifur told the press, "We have not approved the project and have asked the authorities concerned to re-tender it."

The power ministry Wednesday proposed a 144 percent hike of project cost of the Chandpur plant. As per the original project profile, the budget was set to Tk 282 core, and the revised proposal sought Tk 688 crore. Harbin's faulty proposal outlined the cost at $45 million or Tk 288 crore.

The original project profile sought project implementation between July 2001 and June 2004. The revised budget extends the time up to June 2009.

The ministry in its proposal tried to justify the revision proposal that under the present cost structure, the contractor will install 100MW component. The additional fund will be required for installing combined cycle technology. The cost of other components has escalated as well.

Sources said through the events related to the Chandpur power plant project, the BNP led alliance government once again failed to deliver the nation anything in the power sector. "If the government had listened to the review committee decision and brushed aside blatant favouritism for Harbin, the nation could have skipped one full year of delay. Favouritism always leads to complication beyond control," an official noted.

The Daily Star in various reports exposed how Harbin deliberately hides cost of equipment to lower its price in different power bids, and then resort to imposing the cost on the government. In addition, inexperienced and incompetent Harbin has so far failed to deliver a single power project as per the contract -- though it is the only company to have bagged two power deals under the present government.

Harbin has been blacklisted by the Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) in August for its failure to install and run a small three megawatt power plant. The Tongi 80MW power plant built by Harbin has tripped nearly 90 times since it started operation in May last year.

Despite its poor performance, Harbin has received blind support from the government until now. The Chandpur 150MW project remains a shining example in this regard.

The flawed bid of Harbin for the Chandpur project had no technical offer, although it made a price offer of $41 million, which the PDB termed as the lowest bid.

Another Chinese company CMC had filed the other bid of $51 million. Aggrieved by PDB's arbitrary handling of the bid through accepting Harbin's flawed offer, the CMC filed a complaint to the government review panel as per the provision of the PPR, 2003.

The review panel under the Central Procurement Technical Unit of the Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation Department (IMED) found PDB's acceptance of such a bid highly irregular as the price offer was made against a 'phantom technical offer and does not deserve any merit in evaluation'.

Official sources said during the October 2005 review of the Chandpur tender, the three-member IMED panel headed by former law secretary Mohammad Asaduzzaman received informal calls from Harbin's business lobby. They were later pressured to refrain from announcing Harbin's bid invalid.