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Dhaka Electric Supply Company (Desco) has requested a two-year extension for its power infrastructure expansion project, citing significant delays in securing road-cutting approvals from various government agencies. These approvals are crucial for installing underground transmission lines, a key component of the project.

The delay in laying 132kV underground transmission lines has prevented the connection of newly constructed grid substations to their source substations. This bottleneck is slowing the overall implementation of the project, despite substantial progress in civil works and the procurement of major electrical equipment, according to an official monitoring report by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED).

The project, titled “Expansion and Strengthening of Electrical Infrastructure in Desco Area of Dhaka,” was approved in April 2022 with a scheduled completion date of March 2026 and an estimated cost of Tk 2,272.48 crore. However, by the original deadline, only 52.5 percent of physical work and 30.2 percent of financial progress had been achieved. The IMED report also noted an early setback due to a nearly two-year delay in signing the loan agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which only became effective on April 1, 2024, impacting the initial stages of contract awards and execution.

IMED identified the difficulty in obtaining road-cutting approvals as the primary obstacle. The report suggests forming a high-level coordination committee involving representatives from city corporations, the Roads and Highways Department, the Railway Ministry, Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL), and other relevant agencies to address this issue. The project aims to install 30 circuit-kilometers of 132kV underground transmission lines and add four new grid substations and four 33/11kV substations to Desco's network, which currently serves around 1.4 million consumers in northern Dhaka and parts of Gazipur and Narayanganj.