The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday rejected the Power Development Board’s proposal to increase the price of bulk electricity.
BERC Chairman Md Abdul Jalil said that the bulk electricity tariff remains unchanged as Bangladesh Power Development Board failed to provide necessary data in favour of the tariff adjustment proposal.
“We have found a ‘paralysis of analysis’ in the BPDB’s power tariff adjustment proposal. They could not provide us with a clear way out to avoid the inevitable effect of the bulk tariff adjustment on distribution and consumer levels,” he said.
“Therefore, we kept the existing tariff unchanged. However, they can apply before the BERC within 30 working days from the tariff order announcement to reconsider the order,” added the BERC chairman.
At present, the state-owned Power Development Board buys electricity in bulk at Tk3.46 kWt-Tk43.42kWt and sells it to the distributors at Tk5.17kWt.
On 18 May, the energy regulator held the last public hearing on a bulk electricity price hike proposal of the Power Development Board (PDB). However, there was no tariff announcement in the last three and a half months after the hearing.
The last bulk electricity price was announced on 27 February 2020, when the energy regulator hiked the price by 8% to Tk5.17kWt from Tk4.77kWt. Then the board used to buy power at Tk3.46 kWt-Tk43.42kWt.
At the public hearing in May, the board proposed to raise the bulk electricity tariffs by 66% to Tk8.56kWt.
However, the technical committee of the BERC had prepared the tariff adjustment plan with a 15%-17% bulk power price hike, as Tk17,000 crore has been set aside as a power subsidy for the PDB for the current fiscal year, according to sources.
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