Poor transmission system to blame, says Muhith

Finance Minister AMA Muhith held internal 'poor transmission and distribution' system responsible for Saturday's countrywide power outage, which was earlier attributed to an inter-connector glitch.
"Our transmission and distribution system is very poor, which caused the blackout," he told newsmen Sunday at his secretariat office after a meeting with power secretary Monwar Hossain.
The minister said there was no problem from the Indian 400kv line, which pumps imported power into Bangladesh's national grid.
"The problem was from our side."  
Mr Muhith said such problem occurred also in 2003 and 2007. "It doesn't occur again and again. It happens in 10 to 15 years," he said in reply to a query whether such problem will repeat in the future.
Asked about the extent of losses caused due to the blanket power outage, the minister said: "It will take some time to figure out the losses."
Mr Muhith said the power secretary was summoned to brief about the latest development in power restoration. "We also talked about the future plan."
"I asked him about the reason of distributing 7,000 megawatts (MW) of power despite having capacity of generating 11,000MW. We are now planning to raise capacity of small plants to 1,000MW," said the finance minister.
Earlier, Russian ambassador in Dhaka Alexander A Nikolaev met the minister.
Asked about discussion with the ambassador, Mr Muhith said, "The ambassador informed me that bilaterally there are some transactions with them but no private- sector transaction happening. There is some problem in banking relationship with them."

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