Hearing for electricity price hike begins today
The 4-day public hearing will continue till December 3
A public hearing on electricity price adjustment at both wholesale and retail levels will begin on Thursday at Treading Corporation of Bangladesh auditorium.
The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC), the organisation responsible to regulate energy and electricity price, will hold the hearing.
The four-day hearing will continue till December 3.
The energy regulator has fixed the dates in response to applications from the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and six distribution companies.
The BPDB sought a hike in the bulk electricity tariff in the wake of the latest hike in gas prices in June this year, which included a 41 percent increase in the price of gas used in producing electricity.
The Power Development Board claims that its expenditures for generating and purchasing electricity from gas-fired power plants would soar by Tk2,000 crore due to the spike in gas prices.
It also claimed that the Power Development Board would face a deficit of Tk9,000 crore due to electricity sale at a cheaper rate in 2020.
The last electricity price hike happened on November 23, 2017, when the Energy Regulatory Commission had raised the price of each unit by Tk0.35, marking a 5.3 percent increase.
This was the eighth time hike during the Awami League-led government's second term in office since 2009.
Currently as much as 46.14 percent power is being generated from gas, 22.93 percent from furnace oil, 10.24 percent from diesel, and 2.84 percent from renewable sources. The remaining 5.44 percent is being imported, according to the Power Division data.