No hike in electricity price now: BERC

Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) has decided to maintain the existing price of power at the wholesale level. Therefore, the wholesale price of electricity remains unchanged. The BERC announced this in an online meeting on Thursday.

Earlier, the Power Development Board proposed to raise the price by some 66 per cent. Today, the BERC had rejected that appeal.

The BERC had heard the PDB’s proposal to hike the price around five months ago. However, Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) and business representatives from various sectors strongly opposed the proposal.

Price of power has increased some nine times in the last decade. The price of electricity has increased by 118 per cent at wholesale level and by 90 per cent at the consumer level within this time. Lastly, the price of power was raised in February 2020, which took effect in March that year.

The gas price was raised by some 23 per cent on average in June this year. The fuel oil prices have increased by some 42.5-51 per cent since 6 August. Later within a month the price of fuel was reduced by Tk 5 per litre.

According to the Power Division, they had carried out around 2000MW to 2200MW loadshedding on average in a day till August. The situation improved a bit in September comparatively which has spiked again this month. Now around 2500MW to 3000MW load shedding is being carried out daily on an average.