Amid the energy crisis caused by the war in West Asia, the Cabinet Committee on Public Procurement has approved a proposal to buy nine cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Trafigura Group Pte Ltd.
The price for this supply from December 2026 to 2027 is set at $0.10 per MMBTU below the JKM index, the leading LNG price index in northeast Asia.
The number of cargoes can be increased or decreased with the consent of both parties, the Ministry of Finance said, announcing the decision after the 49th meeting of the committee on Tuesday.
On the same day, the 33rd meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in 2026 recommended approving in principle two LNG purchase proposals from the Energy and Mineral Resources Division.
The first proposal calls for processing the supply proposals submitted by Cheniere Marketing International LLP and Trafigura Pte Ltd on a government-to-government basis.
The committee also approved a second proposal on the purchase of LNG from BP Singapore Pte Ltd, Sahara Energy Resources Ltd and Shell International Trading Middle East Ltd FZE through the direct purchase method to maintain regular gas supply in the country for national emergencies and in the public interest.
In addition to these decisions to address the energy crisis, the committee approved a proposal to increase the spending on two purchase contracts for the Shahjalal International Airport Expansion Project at the meeting.
The original price of the construction contract was about Tk 205.88 billion crore. With the addition of more than Tk 3.61 billion in variations, it will stand at about Tk 209.49 billion, a 1.75 percent increase over the original price.
The project is being carried out by the Aviation Dhaka Consortium, comprising Mitsubishi Corporation, Fujita Corporation (Japan) and Samsung C&T (Korea).
In addition, the spending increase in the consultancy service contract is quite high. The original contract price was about Tk 7.72 billion. Adding a variation of Tk 4.05 billion, the revised price stands at about Tk 11.77 billion, i.e. a hike of 52.48 percent.
A joint venture comprising Nippon Koei, Oriental Consultants Global (both from Japan), CPG Consultants (Singapore) and Development Design Consultants (Bangladesh) is working on this project.
The construction of the third terminal of Dhaka's Shahjalal International Airport is 99.93 percent complete. The government had also announced the terminal will launch partial operations on Dec 16.
But the ECNEC, led by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, has once again approved an extension of the project's duration and cost.
Before the completion of the remaining 0.07 percent of the work, the cost has been raised by Tk 8.47 billion. In addition, the project's completion date has been extended by another year.
In total, after the third amendment, the total cost of the project stands at Tk 222.13 billion, and the completion date has been extended until June 2027.
The procurement committee meeting on Wednesday also approved a proposal to import 5,000 metric tonnes of sugar in two phases from Meghna Sugar Refinery Limited, 40,000 tonnes from Saudi Arabia's SABIC Agri-Nutrients and 42,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser from UAE's Fertiglobe, MOP from Russia's Prodintorg and Canada's CCC, and DAP fertiliser from Saudi Arabia's Ma'aden.