Severe power crisis looms as projects being implemented at slow pace

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The country's power sector is heading for a severe crisis due to failure to implement power projects in public and private sectors, reports UNB.
The power shortage is now about 2,000 megawatts (MW). With the fast increasing demand, the situation is likely to be intolerable, affecting production in factories and field.
Officials said generation of about 6336MW electricity was planned to add to the national grid by 2010, of which half was to come by December 2009.
But the achievement so far is less than 10 per cent. Experts in the sector blamed the Power Division's too much interest in setting up rental power plants which are highly inefficient, costly in operation and high gas consuming.
The power tariff of the rental plant is the highest, to the extent of Tk 15 per unit, as against normal power tariff of about Tk 2 per unit.
For rental power plant, Power Development Board (PDB) is to incur huge loss, estimated at Tk 420 million (42 crore) per month.