THE government has reduced furnace oil price by Tk 18 per litre or 30 percent to sell it now at Tk 42 per litre. It has been put into effect from March 31 while users of other petroleum products like Octane, petrol, diesel and kerosene suffer renewed shock from such discriminatory decision. Since the big oil price plunge at global market over the past two years consumers of petroleum products in Bangladesh were demanding their downward price adjustment. The Finance Ministry also made periodic pledges in this respect when almost all countries at global level already implemented similar downward adjustment in the prices of petroleum products. People in Bangladesh paid exorbitant oil prices when it sold at higher cost. Now they deserve the lower price when the government buys it at lower cost to benefit in their real life activities. But the latest decision reducing only the price of furnace oil came as a big shock to the nation. It is not clear why the government has decided to offer the benefit only to industries and power sector, which run factories and power plants with fuel-fired generators. As it stands most users of furnace oil in the power sector are owners of rental power plants which means they will pay less now for furnace oil. But users’ electricity bills will remain unchanged, as the government decision said raising question why power producers should not lower the unit cost as they sell electricity to the government to lower users’ electricity bills at the end. Financial analysts said the cost of per unit power generation in fuel-fired electricity plants will go down by Tk 4 but if users remained deprived of the benefit, it clearly shows a highly discriminatory move to serve the vested interest quarters in big businesses. Only a government not properly elected and having no accountability to the people can take such decision ignoring the expectations of the common people. It is an open secret that Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) is now earning handsome profit overcoming past losses. So there is no justification to continue the highly exorbitant oil prices. We know that the Finance Ministry has approved the proposal to reduce prices of all petroleum products but the move has been shelved at the last moment allowing only the reduction of furnace oil prices. It appears that the government wants to continue the profit from petroleum products to finance the high cost of new pay scale of the government servants. But it is an unfortunate decision to penalize the common users while it allows only the rich to benefit from lower furnace oil prices. In our view the government should immediately lower the prices of all petroleum products to benefit the common people without being selfish to serve the interest of big business.
