No respite from the present gas crisis is in sight

Industrialists wanted uninterrupted gas supply from the government even paying increased prices when the government decreased import of gas.

Responding to their demand, the government, however, hiked industrial prices of gas by up to 179 per cent to raise money to buy additional gas.

But now even after paying the high rate, factories are not running with their full capacity because of shortage of gas.

Factories will have to incur loss and businesspeople are disappointed at this new development.

This will create a ripple effect. If the gas crisis continues, there will be no choice for the textile industries for example and they will have to import clothes from abroad stopping production in the country.

It will increase import dependence, shooting up the country’s ongoing dollar crisis even more.

The inevitable will happen: the economic crisis will deepen further in the coming months.

The relevant government authorities point out that decline in production from domestic gas fields, supplying gas to government fertilizer factories by reducing supply to the industrial sector and dropping in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) supplies are the three major causes of the present gas crisis.

Why doesn’t the government add two other reasons for the crisis: mismanagement and corruption in the sector? The overall economy is now on the brink of collapse.

The government hiked gas prices by an average of 80 percent last January, the largest single hike in Bangladesh’s history.

Then the price of gas in the industry was increased up to 179 per cent. After increasing the price, the government started buying LNG from the open market in February.

So supply was fairly normal. But now the crisis has increased again. In the coming days supply of LNG may further decrease.

There is little doubt that the government’s wrong energy policy, negligence and inefficiency for production from domestic gas fields, and the power sector is now in a mess. There are currently 28 gas fields in the country.

Domestic gas fields normally supply 220 million cubic feet of gas per day, which has now dropped to 15 million cubic feet. On Wednesday, 205 million cubic feet of gas was supplied from domestic gas fields.

The businesses as well as people in general now will have to bear the brunt of the government’s failure to manage the energy sector.