Speakers at a seminar in the capital on Saturday said that the energy regulator should explain or analysis the reason of price hike to its consumers thus it should be justified or understandable to the people. "The government should give more authority to the regulators in this regard, the energy regulator should pay more attention to the concerns of the consumers and industries in fixing prices of power and petroleum and maintain rationality in the pricing mechanism" said Dr Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI) at the seminar at International Convention Centre City.
He said the rationality of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) in its price increase should be understandable to the people, as people wants to know that it is their right to know about the real cause of price hike.
He was presenting a keynote paper at the seminar organized by the Power and Energy Division in an observance of Power and Energy Week. With energy secretary Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem in the chair, the seminar was also addressed, among others, by Power Development Board chairman Khaled Mahmud, BERC member Mizanur Rahman, Petrobangla chairman Abul Monsur Mohammad Foyejullah, Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) chairman Mohammad Akram Al Hossain, energy advisor of Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Prof Shamsul Alam and Bangabandhu Chair Professor at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) Dr. Joyashree Roy. Zarif Munir, Partner and MD, BCG Malaysia, moderated the seminar.
Dr Mansur pointed out that the country's present challenge is to fixing energy price or providing power and energy at the consumers end within an affordable price range, as power Development board is now producing power from liquid fuel.
"Huge pressure for price increase is coming up as there is no possibility of coming of any coal-based power plant before 2021. Still there are a big number of fuel-fired power plants in operation with huge cost", he said.
He also suggested for allowing private sector more in power and petroleum business with maintaining strong monitoring to check any monopoly. Taking part in the discussion, PDB chairman Khaled Mahmud said now 25 percent of power is being generated from liquid fuel which was 5 percent in 2009.
"PDB has to incur Tk 0.60 per unit in the sale of electricity and until last fiscal year 2017-18, the PDB received Tk 41,000 crore as loan from the government to cover the loss. "This has a big impact on our balance sheet," Khaled said.
"But now we're receiving such support as grant from the government is contenuing", he added. "The power tariff fixed by the regulators were never reflects in the proceedings of public hearing conducted by the BERC," Prof Shamsul Alam said.
He said BERC lacks transparency in its decision making process as the power tariff fixed by the regulators never reflect the proceedings of public hearing. "It will be always unfair to fix a power tariff without considering the electricity cost of off-grid consumers," he added.
