STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said that running power plants with imported gas, oil, and coal has become a financial burden for the state.

Her statement comes a day after she said she was thinking about asking authorities concerned to temporarily reduce electricity generation to save fuel.

Around 52 percent of the country’s power production capacity is gas-based, 27 percent is produced with furnace oil, 5.86 percent with diesel, 8.03 percent with coal, 1 percent with hydro, 0.5 percent with other renewable energy and 5.27 is imported, according to Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) data.

Speaking at a programme, Hasina yesterday spoke about the government’s problems in power generation for the second consecutive day while people are enduring severe power cuts for days mainly due to reduced natural gas supply to power plants.

Currently, Bangladesh has the capacity to generate 22,348MW of electricity every day. The maximum demand was forecasted to be 14,000MW yesterday, but the highest peak-time generation was 13,228MW, according to BPDB.

Of the total power produced, 56 percent was used by households, 28 percent by industries, 11 percent was used commercially and 3 percent in agriculture.

The country started power rationing on June 30 to make up the shortfall.

While inaugurating the country’s first campus-based business incubator “Sheikh Kamal IT Business Incubator”, Sheikh Jamal Dormitory and Rosy Jamal Dormitory at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) virtually from the Gonobhaban, Hasina said the government has had to resort to load-shedding and cut down power generation to ease the burden of subsidies.