CAB urges govt to lower energy price

The Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) has urged upon the government to revise the power and energy price downward for the sake of country's economy, which is facing serious trouble due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The rights body placed a 13-point proposal before the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) including rationalising of expenditure for power and energy supply, reducing the rates for power through exclusion of all rental power plants' capacity charge as well as leaving more than 20-year-old plants out of operations.

Energy adviser of the CAB Professor M Shamsul Alam wrote a letter to the BERC chairman on Tuesday in this regard, a statement said.

In the letter, Mr Shamsul Alam said while the country's economy is hurting due to the highly infectious Covid-19 disease, it is an obligation to reduce the power and energy price in a bid to restructure the economy.

He said people's purchasing power has dwindled drastically due to the pandemic leading to limited revenue collection.

"It is a necessity to reduce the energy cost on priority basis to help decrease the cost of manufactured goods and services, so that people can spend money for availing those, making positive impact on revenue flow," the letter said.

The rights body called for investing the fund in power generation through PDB and gas exploration through BAPEX instead of investing elsewhere.

The CAB proposed for reducing the energy price through minimising the supply cost and preventing "irrational wealth accumulation" in power and gas supply.

It suggested revoking power purchase from private sector oil-fired plants and adjusting the price for public sector plants in line with lower oil import cost.

The rights body also requested the BERC for rationally fix the LPG and fuel oil prices as per the BERC Act aiming to make the price rates logical and justified.

The consumers' platform called for operating the public sector power and energy companies based on 'cost' instead of 'cost-plus', as well as lessening the tax, VAT and duties to acceptable rates until the economy gets back on track.

The CAB called for preventing alleged corruption in all agencies associated with the country's power and energy sector.