Energy & Power

Column
Reverse Swing

Missed Opportunities
Farid Hossain

The price of CNG or Compressed Natural Gas will rise this month. If that's a bad news, the good news is that there will be no hike in the price of diesel and petrol. Not now. These remarks came from Prof. M. Tamim, the chief adviser's special assistant on power and energy during a meeting with the members of the Forum for Energy Reporters.

The BUET-teacher-turned-adviser explained the rationale for hiking the CNG price, the cheapest transport fuel in Bangladesh. The price gap between CNG and petrol is so wide and unacceptable. The subsidy the government provides to make CNG so cheap benefits only a small group of people _ mainly the transport owners. While the government is unable to raise the prices of petrol, diesel and octane _ despite crude oil price jumping to US$110 _ is understandable.

Tamim admitted that the prices of the basics like rice have already made living miserable. So this caretaker government does not want to add to the miseries by hiking fuel price except that of CNG. Diesel price, for example, will not be raised right now as it may hurt the farmers. So, the government will continue with the subsidies in agriculture. According to Tamim fuel accounts for a large share of the subsidy the government provides in the national budget. The subsidy is a burden on the economy. But the government will not cut down on the subsidies considering the plight of the people and also to encourage farmers to grow more food.

The special assistant could give us no good news about power or rather shortage of it. In spite of addition of some electricity in the national grid during the past one year the shortfall during this summer will range from 500 MW to 800 MW, which will be managed by shedding the load.

In other words, the special assistant is asking the power users to get prepared for frequent power cuts during the summer. No wonder. In Bangladesh, summer is the season of fruits. It is also a season of power outages. This also a season of suffering in extreme heat and shut down in factories due to power cuts. The special assistant told the reporters that there will be 1,000 MW of new electricity as a result of new private-sector power plants and efficient management of the sector. But that is not before December next year. Power cuts have already started making a hell of urban life. The rural people are also being hurt by the outages. Industries are depending on their own sources _ generators _ to beat load shedding.

News on the gas front is hardly encouraging. There too is a crisis for which none but the past administration is to be blamed. The special assistant _ very thorough in his understanding of the sector under his charge _ blamed the immediate past government of the four-party alliance for much of the plight the nation faces today. There has been no new drilling or exploration for gas since the discovery in Bibiyana as the then-government failed to provide "market signals" to the foreign oil companies which rushed under the first and second rounds of bidding.

As a result a country that in early 1990s was in a position to export gas is today seeking to import it. Myanmar has already rejected a Bangladesh request to sell gas to it citing India as their priority. Bangladesh has also failed to reignite India's interest in taking gas from Myanmar through a pipeline across Bangladesh. India is trying to find alternatives. These, according to the special assistant, are the tales of missed opportunities.

In a world of crisis, opportunities are hard to come by. But Bangladesh had to luxury of missing the opportunities. Will Prof. Tamim be able to change it?