Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) incurs huge loss every year due to purchasing of electricity from the rental and quick rental power plants at high rates, officials said.
They said, the state-runs entity has started buying electricity from these two plants since the fiscal year 2007-08 when the government allowed the private entrepreneurs in power generation.
“The board procuring electricity at higher rates from the private power plants and selling it at comparatively lower prices to the distribution companies is sustaining huge revenue losses every year,” a senior BPDB official told The New Nation on Monday asking not to be named.
He said: The loss amount is increasing day by day as the Board has to bear the additional cost for payment of rental power suppliers.
BPDB suffered nearly Tk 6,000 crore operating loss last fiscal (2014-15) mainly on account of persistent gap between generation cost and selling price of electricity, according to the official.
“Our selling price of electricity is still below the purchasing cost, even after upward adjustment of their price several times,” he noted.
The private sector’s power plants are now generating half of the electricity out of the country’s total generation.
The country’s power plants are generating nearly 6,300 megawatts of electricity every day on average against a demand for 8,300 megawatts. “The government’s dependence on rental power plants forced the BPDB to purchase electricity at higher price pushing up its operating loss every year,” Professor Shamsul Alam, adviser of Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB), told The New Nation yesterday.
He said the board is now burdened with buying electricity from private sector at high rate. The government later shifted the burden on the consumers by hiking power tariff several times.
“The government initially tried to justify the power purchase from expensive rental plants as a short-term solution to make up the shortage of power supply. But it extended the contracts with the rental power producers until 2020, as low-cost mega plants failed to start operations timely,” he added.
Prof Alam claimed that the government has enough room to reduce the financial burden of BPDB by reducing system loss, checking electricity theft and enhancing efficiency of the distribution companies. But it has apparently failed to do so due to wrong policies in energy sector.
“The policy inconsistency is not only widening the loss of the BPDB, but it is also helping eat up all profit earned by the public sector’s power plants and subsidy provided by the government to the sector,” he added.
Official sources said, in the fiscal 2014-15, BPDP spent about Tk 16,300 crore to buy 2,200 crore units of power from private sector, but it earned Tk 10,200 crore revenue from the sale of the electricity causing a loss of Tk 6,100 crore.
They claimed that it made an overall profit of about Tk 700 crore in generating power at its own plants and in buying electricity from other public sector generators during the said period.
