Power price hike to create bad impact on economy: Experts

Reza Mahmud :
Experts warned over the government’s move to hike power price once again in June to meet conditions of the International Monitory Fund (IMF).

They thought that the decision of increasing power price will create worse impact on the economy in the country.

Experts said that hiking electricity means increasing of everything such as rod, cement, sugar, edible oil and such others.

The personal bill of electricity also will be increased.

It will increase costs of livelihood for everyone.

Sources said that the Finance Ministry officials on Tuesday assured the visiting IMF delegates in a meeting that the government decided to increase power price in June to fulfill IMF’s condition to bid its second term 4.7 billion dollar loans.

The government is going to take the loan from the IMF as it is suffering from reserve deficit for long.

Meanwhile, the IMF has gave several conditions on the bid to disburse its loan to Bangladesh including reduce subsidies to the power generating sector.

Meanwhile, experts expressed their anxiety saying that such a move might create worse impact in the weak economy of the country.

“The lower income groups of people are living in vulnerable conditions due to the existing inflations. They are struggling to meet their daily livelihood while the earning sources have shrunken and the prices of essentials are high,” Eminent Economist Dr. A.B. Mirza Azizul Islam told The New Nation on Wednesday.

The former Adviser of the caretaker government said that the move of hiking the power tariff again will create worse situation to the lower income groups of people as most of them are rely on electricity now.

The experts suggest finding out alternative ways to reduce subsidies to the energy sector.

Dr. A.B. Mirza Azizul Islam suggested reducing power generating and distribution costs in collective ways. The energy experts also echoed similar suggestions. They also asked the government to shun the way to generate electricity by using oil but use LNG as it will be most cost reducing.

When contacted, Energy expert Professor Dr. Ijaz Hossain told The New Nation on Wednesday, “The government should reduce enormous unnecessary costing in power generating sector to avoid further price hiking.”

Numbers of power generating facilities are kept idle but government has extra costing there for capacity payments.

He said that when the Liquefied natural gas (LNG) price reduced in world market, the government failed to cope that and still using oil to produce electricity.
The Professor suggested to increase LNG containing capacity and make plan to use it for generating electricity instead of using oil.

When contacted, Energy expert Professor Dr. M Tamim said on Wednesday, “The government should stop misuse of electricity and extra generating costs for surviving the sector without paying subsidies.”