Originally posted in The Dhaka Tribune on 18 January 2023
The government has raised the retail gas prices for public, private and captive power plants and also for industries and commercial users with effect from February 1.
As per the new government announcement on Wednesday, the gas prices have been increased by almost three times for public and private power plants while almost double for captive power plants and industries, and significantly hiked for commercial users.
However, prices for household consumers, CNG-run for motor vehicles and tea estates were kept unchanged.
The Energy and Mineral Resources Division set the prices through a gazette notification issued on Wednesday applying the new amendment to the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) Act, which empowered the government to set all kinds of energy prices bypassing the regulator’s jurisdictions at any time.
As per the gazette notification, the public and private power plants including the IPP and rental power plants will pay gas price at Tk14 per unit (each cubic metre) instead of previous price of Tk5.02 while the captive power plants, small power plants and commercial power plants will pay Tk30 per unit instead of previous price of Tk16.
The large, medium and small industries will pay Tk30 per unit against the previous price of Tk11.98 for large, Tk11.78 for medium and Tk10.78 for small, cottage and other industries.
The commercial users of gas like hotels and restaurants will pay Tk30.50 instead of previous Tk26.64 per unit.
The household consumers will continue to pay Tk18 per unit for metered burners while Tk990 for single burners and Tk1080 for double burners each month.
The CNG price remained unchanged at Tk43 for the motor vehicles, while tea estates will pay Tk11.93 per unit as usual, said the gazette notification.
Earlier, the BERC had raised the average gas price by 22.78% for the retail consumers, except for CNG-run vehicles, in the country with effect back from June 1 in 2022.