The all too important issue of energy supply

The capital city of the country is found often these days as the venue of lavish conferences devoted to examining the great potentialities that this country has in the economic field. Assortment of strategies are stated or restated in these conferences, seminars, symposiums, dialogues and discussion meetings. But even a little educated person may tell us from common sense that most of these strategies for economic growth are becoming irrelevant to the present-day context of Bangladesh. This is because the most basic precondition for growth which is ample and reliable supply of energy, is not being fulfilled. The demand for such energy supply is increasing but there is yet no firm sign about the energy supply situation will improve to any marked extent in the near future. It needs no pundit to tell us that without an assured energy supply -- even if all the other factors supportive of growth are provided -- the engine of growth, will remain motionless. It does not matter how many or how much of the other growth-promoting factors we may succeed in assembling, the growth engine will not move up and ahead until we have stoked it well with fuel to run continuously. We have recently heard about the strategies to be adopted to set Bangladesh on a higher growth path with the goal of attaining a middle income country status by 2021 and to become a major economy in the world by 2030. But all such strategies will be of no use -- notwithstanding all the great potential that we will like to parade about our future in the economic field -- if we fail to improve sooner rather than later the situation in our overall energy sector. Abundance of easily trainable workers who can be made to work devotedly at far lower wages by the world's standards, relatively stable macro-economic fundamentals, a favourable policy environment for investments, etc., have long been touted as Bangladesh's pluses. But what good are these, if energy in the required quantities cannot be supplied to various sectors of the economy. The projections about future growth rate of the economy will also serve no purpose unless we set the basic infrastructures including that of power and energy. The visions for Bangladesh's faster economic growth will largely depend on a much faster rate of industrialization. That, in turn, is mainly dependent on having the needed energy availability to drive such industrialization. Hence, the government has to expedite its actions to help improve things in this sector faster. Its pointing to years of neglect before its taking over of power, will hardly be acceptable anymore. The people will have reasons to say the failures in the past are no reasons for not becoming extremely serious in the present to make-up for the past deficiencies and score successes in augmenting energy supplies within the shortest possible time. Therefore, all theorizing and smooth talks on the potentials of the Bangladesh economy should seem like irrelevant exercises in futility, as long as the main prerequisite for realizing such potentials -- greater and efficient energy supply -- is not fulfilled.