Bangladesh

As the country is reeling under severe power crisis, energy experts, economists, donors and other stakeholders at a seminar titled “Action Planning Exercise to Address Energy and Power Crisis in Bangladesh” on April 15 urged the policymakers to come up with an immediate action plan to overcome the looming problem.

Sounding a note of caution that the country might face a serious power crisis within next three to five years if proper decisions were not taken and implemented on an urgent basis, they also laid emphasis on alternative sources of energy other than natural gas to ensure the country’s future energy security in light with the National Energy Policy, 1996.

In the National Energy Policy, there was a clear guideline to utilise every sources of energy to ensure the country’s future energy security and suggestion for developing a coal zone in the country’s coal-rich northwestern region.

Speaking on the occasion as chief guest, Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser for the Energy, Prof. Dr. M. Tamim said the government would have to take policy decisions on exploration and production of energy from coal and its reservation as soon as possible, otherwise, the country might face severe energy crisis in three to five years from now as flow of natural gas would be reduced after 2012.

“The existing gas reserve could serve the new power plants coming in for the next 3-4 years,” he said, adding, “But, after that the country will have to look for alternative sources for power generation.”

He also said that the coal policy would be implemented soon and the energy prices would have to reset to adjust it to the soaring global oil price. “As of today’s price, we have to give Tk. 33 per litre as subsidy on diesel as its international price is Tk. 73. We are selling it only Tk. 40 and I think this subsidy on diesel should be removed.”

Prof Tamim also put blame on past political leaderships for the power crisis now prevailing in the country.

Echoing the same tone, Military secretary to the President Maj. Gen. M Aminul Karim said that the previous government high-ups including bureaucrats and experts lacked the capacity to project properly the country’s energy sector.

Power Secretary Dr Faozul Kabir Khan, however, expressed different view and said that there is no power crisis in the country but facing some problems. He pointed out that the gap between demand and supply, transmission and distribution bottlenecks, weak institutional capacity of power utilities, limited capital, power tariff not reflecting cost, dependence on natural gas, non-transparent procurement are resulting in frequent load-shedding and quality of power supply.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Chairman and Trustee Prof. Mozaffer Ahmed identified various problems facing the power sector including massive mismanagement in billing system, non-payment of bills by different government organizations, lack of billing record of household and other consumptions and proper distribution policy and imbalance and non-transparency.

He also said that dependency of donor-driven research should be reduced and opined that technically a ‘good report’ is not enough; rather we should give more attention in its smooth and successful implementation.

UNDP Assistant Country Director Dr Aminul Islam, in his presentation on “Synthesis of the Action Plan, placed a number of recommendations including rehabilitation and maintenance of de-rated power station, promotion of small power and energy project, setting up nuclear power plant with highly skilled manpower and coal- based power generation and integrate rural energy development programme to overcome the existing deadlock in power sector.