State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid on Thursday said Power tariff will be increased from February 1 instead of March 1.

Gazette notification will be issued on Thursday in regard to the power tariff adjustment, he said while briefing reporters at his ministry.

He said the power tariff will be hiked between Tk 0.34 and Tk 0.70 per unit for all kinds of consumers depending on their volume of consumption while gas price will go up by Tk 0.75 per unit only for power plants.

He also said that a dynamic fuel pricing will be introduced for the consumers from March 1 under which price of petroleum fuel will go up and down in line with international market price.

“Each month fuel price will be declared for the consumers”, he said adding neighbouring India do this every day.

He noted that the steps have been taken to minimise the government losses caused by the increase in dollar rate. “This year the government will incur loss of Tk 43,000 crore due to sale of electricity at lower price,” he said.

This step has been taken as part of the government move to come out of the subsidy now being given to the power sector, said the minister.

According to the BPDB’s Annual Report 2022-23, the fiscal year saw the production of 87,024 million kilowatt hours of electricity at a total cost of TK 98,646 crore.   

Its per unit production cost was Tk 11.33, while it was selling electricity at Tk 6.7 per unit — incurring a loss of about Tk 4.63 per unit.

This imbalance has led to a staggering loss of Tk 47,788 crore for the fiscal year, as the government grapples with purchasing power from private and international sources at significantly higher rates.

With this huge loss, the government has been facing great trouble as it has to purchase electricity worth Tk 82,778 crore from private sector power producers, while it generates electricity worth Tk 13,307 crore from its own generation plants.

Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque