DHAKA - A consortium that includes China National Technical Import and Export Corporation (CNTIC) and China National Corp. for Overseas Economic Cooperation (CCOEC) has been awarded a contract for a Bangladesh power plant.

Bangladeshi Ashuganj Power Station Company Limited (APSCL) on Tuesday signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with the consortium of two Chinese firms for the installation of the 420-MW coal-fired power plant.

AMM Sazzadur Rahman, managing director of APSCL, Tang Yi, chairman of board of CNTIC, and Hou Xuejun, chairman of board of (CCOEC), signed the contact on behalf of their respective sides at a ceremony in Dhaka.

Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, power, energy and mineral resources affairs adviser to the Bangladeshi prime minister, and Bangladeshi State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, among others, witnessed the signing.

Kshitish Chandra Biswas, director of the project, told Xinhua that the power project will be implemented at Ashuganj in Bangladesh's Brahmanbaria district, some 109 km northeast of capital Dhaka.

Under the EPC agreement, the consortium will do engineering, construct the plant, procure the machinery and necessary performance testing to put the power plant into commercial operation, he said.

The project will be fully completed in three years, and go into commercial operation and be connected to the national grid by April 2021.