Sustainable power supply crucial for Bangladesh: ICCB

Sustainable and uninterrupted supply of power is of utmost importance for the economic growth as per capita power consumption in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world, a leading chamber said yesterday.

The installed power capacity of Bangladesh was only 200 megawatt in 1972, according to the news bulletin of the International Chamber of Commerce-Bangladesh for the October-December period.

Since 1972, the current power generation has increased to 16,046 MW thanks to favourable government policies, which have attracted private investment and independent power producers, it said. The per capita power consumption in Bangladesh stood at 433-kilowatt hour as of October 2017, one of the lowest in the world.

Though the government has achieved significant success in electricity generation, actual capacity utilisation is only 9,507 MW because of the existing vulnerable and double-digit system loss in the distribution mechanism, ICCB said. A severe disruption is taking place in industrial production and other economic activities because of the country’s failure in adequately managing the load-shedding, it said.

Citing a recent survey, the chamber said strength outages end result in a loss of industrial output worth $1 billion a 12 months which reduces the GDP boom via about half a percentage factor in Bangladesh. It is estimated that the complete transmission and distribution losses quantity to one-third of the complete generation, the price of which is equal to the $247 million a year, it said.

“Therefore, there is a want for the improvement of fabulous infrastructure and advantageous monitoring machine to overcome the essential hurdle in successfully delivering power.” Due to fast-depleting fuel reserve and lack of primary initiatives to enhance neighborhood coal, it is turning into tough to obtain a sustainable neighborhood primary electricity source.

According to an estimate, Bangladesh would meet 92 percentage of its demand with imported gasoline by using 2030 if neighborhood coal is no longer explored and exploited, the ICCB said. The generation of electricity in coal-fired strength flowers would be possible and a great deal more cost-effective if locally explored fantastic coal is used as gas as an alternative of the imported ones, the chamber said.

“Bangladesh should, therefore, go for all-out business exploration of coal in the next 5 years to make the energy region sustainable and vibrant.”