The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission on Wednesday took cognisance of a Dhaka Power Distribution Company proposal for raising its average retail power price by 11.93 per cent and another proposal submitted by the Power Development Board seeking a 15 per cent average power price hike.
The commission earlier took cognisance of a Dhaka Electricity Supply Company proposal for increasing its average retail power price by 21.34 per cent and another proposal for raising that of the West Zone Power Distribution Company by 18.99 per cent, and asked the Rural Electrification Board to revise its proposed power price hike.
Officials of the power distribution agencies expect that the commission will increase the power tariff by the next winter.
Before that, the BERC will have to complete by December public hearings on the proposals for power price hike of the five power distribution agencies.
BERC chairman Yusuf Hossain said they would complete the public hearings on the proposals of the PDB and the DPDC by November.
The PDB sought to increase the power price so that the power distribution venture of the board would break even.
The board also proposed that the commission should categorise the residential consumers into four slabs based on power consumption instead of three to realise higher revenue from the rich.
The DPDC proposed that the commission should increase the power price in accordance with its demand so that the company could pay a part of the dues it had inherited from the DESA to the PDB. The price hike will also enable it to pay off the loans taken from the government and different lending agencies, in addition to Tk 107 crore in corporate tax, the power distribution company argued.
The PDB high-ups along with experts and consumer rights activists for the first time reached at the consensus that failure to increase power generation in the public sector matching the private generation was leading the country's power sector to an anarchic situation.
ASM Alamgir Kabir, chairman of the PDB, the country's lone power buyer and distributor, on Wednesday afternoon said at present the private-public power generation ratio was 50:50, which would increase to 70:30 soon, leading the PDB to a huge monetary deficit as its purchasing price of power from the private sector was much higher than its selling price.
Alamgir emphasised increasing capabilities of the PDB so that the board could invest more in power generation.
Power expert Shamsul Alam, who also represents the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, told New Age that it seamed the government had been gradually waking up to the reality that power price hike was not the solution to the imbalance between cost and revenue of the state-run power distribution companies.
He said the policy of realising the addition cost for power generation from people would not offer the government any solution in the socio-economic perspective. Rather, the government should go for a combination of a major portion of low-cost public sector power and a smaller portion of high-cost private power, he added.
The government, however, is implementing 58 per cent power projects in the private sector and the remaining 42 per cent in the public sector in line with the power generation plan for 2010 to 2016.
As for increase in power generation cost, the BERC increased the bulk price of power in two phases – one by 11 per cent with effect from February 1 and the other by 6.66 per cent with effect from August 1.
The commission also increased the retail price of power by 5 per cent with effect from February 1.
The BERC on November 3, 2010 accepted the proposal of the PDB for increasing the bulk rate of electricity by 110 per cent in the next three years.
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