Energy Bangla

Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) is set to challenge the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC)’s move to hike electricity price from January 1 next year.
It feels that the BERC is taking “unlawful” step against the consumers as it allows the high cost errant rental/quick rental power plants to produce electricity from their low efficient plants and misusing the Gas and Electricity Development Fund as per guidelines although the money came from the consumers’ pocket
directly from their gas/electricity bills.
“It is not a new challenge, there are two separate cases against the BERC in this connection, the right’s body filed the cases in 2017, however, this time we will add the fresh move by the BERC with the pending case as an “incremental” one,” Prof M Shamsul Alam, energy expert of CAB told on Saturday.
“BERC has taken “unlawful” steps several times, it held such a public hearing in 2018-19 when the Commission issued fresh tariff hike order on October 16 in 2018, during the recent public hearing (held from November 28-December 3) they failed to make any comments on the use of “Gas and power Development Fund,” clear cut decision on high cost rental and quick rental power projects, the status of Rural Electrification Board (REB) and Power Development Board (PDB) as BERC allows these state-owned organizations to make money through selling electricity to the consumers�.all these things are the breach of BERC Act,” Alam said.
Aiming to increase electricity tariff from the first day of 2020, BERC opens the public hearing on bulk price. In its submission, PDB said it wants to offset its huge deficit that would stand at Tk 8,608 crore in the next fiscal year.
The government usually gives loans with 3 per cent interest to the power sector for its development every year. But this year, the loss in power sector will go up as the government is importing huge LNG from abroad, costing around US$4 billion.
At the hearing, PDB General Manager (commercial operation) Md Kausar Ameer Ali said that the bulk electricity transmission cost was Tk 5.83 in fiscal 2018-19 and now electricity bulk tariff rate is Tk 4.77. “As a result, the BPDB faced a loss of over Tk 68.62 billion in the last fiscal year,” he said. “All these figures are ‘non-realistic or fake’, PDB is paying Tk 2,176 crore as capacity payment to the errant rental/quick rental power plants, on the other hand government did not announce that PDB and REB would run under company law so why the BERC thinks that both these organizations should be profit making entities,” he asked.
Alam said two major issues need to be discussed by the Court, one is Rental Power Projects and another one is the mode of service delivery system of public enterprises as BERC wants to see that REB and PDB should make profit through providing services to the consumers.
“It is the government’s plan to electrify all households through expanding REB’s line across the country. It is good but non-commercial idea, it could increase the number of consumers but increase huge losses of REB as the industrial consumers growth in rural areas is almost zero or is very low, so why government should take the burden of unplanned growth of REB’s expansion and why the other consumers’ should pay for it,” he asked.
“The government introduced “Life line Tariff” for the poor people, government should pay subsidy for them in any way it should not be a pass through item,” Alam said. He said they had opposed the gas tariff hikes during the public hearings in August last year, but the tariff hike did not reflect their arguments.
“We support the government development plan, consumers’ are ready to pay money for better services, we welcome that rational things including tariff hike but this move is illogical and has violated the interests of the consumers so we have no way but to continue our cases,” he said adding that the tariff had been increased in line with the roadmap of the Power and Energy Ministry.