Bangladesh’s petroleum import bill surged about 32.70 per cent year-on-year to US$3.34 billion in the last 2017-18 fiscal on the back of rising consumption by rental and quick-rental power plants.
The settlement of letters of credit (LCs), generally known as actual imports, for petroleum products stood at US$3346.88 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year compared to US$ 2522.22 million during the corresponding period of previous fiscal, show a central bank figure on Tuesday.
The overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import letters of credit, increased to US$3.93 billion in 2017-18 against US$2.57 billion in the previous fiscal year.
The country’s oil import bill stood at US$2.52 billion in the previous 2016-17 fiscal year, showing 3.30 per cent year-on-year rise.
State-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the country’s sole importer of petroleum product, said it raised import of fuel to cope with greater demand in the power, transport and farm sectors.”BPC imported 6.7 million tonnes of petroleum products, including diesel, jet fuel, furnace oil and octane to meet soaring demand from power, irrigation and communications sector,” a high official of BPC told The New Nation yesterday.
He said that the country would require more or less 7.2 million tonnes of different petroleum products during this fiscal and it thereby pushes up the fuel import bill further.
“BPC would borrow US$1.0 billion from ITFC to accommodate the additional fuel import bill in this fiscal,” said the BPC official, adding that the state-run agency (BPC) would take US$ 800 million loan initially for importing petroleum products from international market and the remaining US$ 200 million would be borrowed to meet contingency requirements.
Recently, a high-powered delegation of the state-run agency signed the loan deal with ITFC at a meeting held at Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Analysts, however, said, Bangladesh’s annual demand of fuel is marking a sharp rise in the recent years due mainly to installation of many rental and quick oil-fired power plants and manufacturing unit’s growing dependency on diesel generators due to insufficient and unreliable electricity supply.
“The import of fuel oil has increased mainly to run dozens of the rental and quick rental power plants. The huge import liability of petroleum import pushed the national economy under severe strain,” Dr Shamsul Alam, an energy expert, told The New Nation yesterday.
Bangladesh’s total installed electricity generation capacity now stands at 17,282 MW (as on September 2018), according to Power Development Board.
Of the total generation, contribution of fuel based (HFO and HSD) power plants is 5961 MW.
On Monday, the actual electricity generation was 8997 MW in day peak hours while it was 11115 MW in evening peach hours.
Bangladesh mainly imports crude oil from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi and refined oil from global energy traders Unipec, ENOC, PetroChina, Egypt’s Middle East Oil Refinery, Vietnam’s Petrolimex, Malaysia’s Petronas, Philippines National Oil Company, and the Maldives National Oil Company.
