State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources said the government had started giving power connections again to new industrial consumers from Saturday last.
"We have started giving electricity connections from today (Saturday)," he said on the sideline of a programme arranged on the occasion of signing of memoranda of understanding (MoU) between two Indian private firms and the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) for building 4,600 megawatts (MW) power plant projects at Bidyut Bhaban in the city.
"Currently, we don't have any electricity crisis," said Mr Hamid.
Despite having sufficient electricity generation capacity, the electricity supply currently is being hampered due to transmission line bottlenecks, he said.
"We shall remove the transmission line problems within the next three years," he assured.
Officials said electricity connections to industrial consumers were limited over the past several years due to inadequate power generation.
The Power Division under the MPEMR also had made conditional the electricity connections for industrial consumers with installing solar panels.
The government in 2012, however, had decided to provide uninterrupted and reliable electricity supply to factories and manufacturing units by introducing Q category tariff structure, which is higher than the usual tariff structure.
Industry owners, however, rejected the Q tariff structure and refused to get uninterrupted electricity at higher tariff.
Currently, the country's average electricity generation is hovering around 7,500 MW against the demand for over 8,500 MW.
azizur.rahman@outlook.com
