Gas price hike to make life even more burdensome for mass people

What will be the sure aftereffects of the increase in retail piped gas prices in four consumer categories up to 179 per cent that was declared Wednesday, with effect from February 1? It is not difficult to guess but this would surely increase the living cost of people as the cost of power generation and industrial production will increase greatly.
This hike would also greatly make life of people in general even more difficult hurting the poor and small and medium-sized businesses. Hotels and restaurants, as economists have pointed out, will increase the prices of meals as their owners will have to pay more for gas. The people who take their meals at cheap eateries where prices have already gone up substantially because of food inflation will have to shun them or remain half-fed.
Would the other four categories, for which the gas price will remain the same such as household, fertiliser, the tea industry and compressed natural gas, remain unhurt? These will also have to inevitably bear the ripple effects of this gas price hike by a huge margin up to 179 per cent.
 The government through an executive order increased the fuel oil a few months ago followed by a hike in both bulk and retail price of power. For increasing the retail power price through an executive order, bypassing the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC), the government even amended the existing law a few days ago.
When the fuel price was hiked by about 150 per cent on an average, fertiliser price was also increased making the cost of agricultural cost to greatly go up.
 It is not difficult to understand why the government has gone for such a hefty hike of prices of oil, fertiliser, power and gas one after another: to get the IMF bailout loan package of $ 4.5 billion.
 Though the government is refusing to call this loan as bailout of economy, the fact is this money the government is borrowing from the international lending organisation to tide over the crisis of the country’s falling reserves, notwithstanding the prediction by economists that $4.5 billion may not avert the fall of economy towards a deeper crisis when the country’s economy might be declared bankrupt altogether.
 The government is telling people that the present economic crisis is due to the fallout of the Russia-Ukraine war and the pandemic, but the truth for Bangladesh is the government’s flawed policy, inefficiency and corruption dealt a heavy blow to economy over the decade and the war and pandemic only exposed it. The general people are now shouldering the burden of this government’s misrule.