The second phase gas price hike comes into effect today as the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission finds no bar to executing its decision after the Appellate Division vacated the High Court’s stay on it.
The consumers will now have to pay 22.7 per cent higher than they paid until February 28 for gas supplies as a part of the hike was enforced on March 1.
The energy commission on Wednesday issued a letter asking all the gas distribution utilities and the CNG filling stations to charge the new rates of natural gas from midnight past Wednesday in line with its order issued on February 23, the commission’s director (gas) AKM Monowar Hossain Akhand told New Age.
The commission made the decision at a weekly meeting after examining the Appellate Division’s order passed on Tuesday, he said.
With the order, chamber judge Justice Syed Mahmud Hossain also set June 5 for hearing of Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission’s leave to appeal against the HC stay order by a regular bench.
Chairman of Energy Regulatory Commission Tribunal Salim Mahmud, also a former member of the commission, said that there was now no legal or moral bar to enforcing the energy commission’s order to increase the gas prices for the second phase from June 1.
He said that the hikes in gas prices were enforced in two phases in the single order of the commission following the single proposal of the utilities.
On February 28, the High Court stayed this year’s 2nd phase gas price hike for six months and asked the energy commission’s chairman and secretary to explain in four weeks why the notification regarding increasing gas prices twice a year would not be declared illegal.
The court had passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed by architect Mubasshar Hussain on behalf of Consumer Association of Bangladesh.
According to the notification, issued by the commission on February 23, the consumers will be charged Tk 900 for single burner and Tk 950 for double burner per month from today while the prepaid meter users will be charged Tk 11.20 per cubic metre.
From today, the consumers will be charged for each cubic metre of natural gas Tk 40 for compressed natural gas in vehicles, Tk 3.16 at grid-tied power stations, Tk 9.62 at captive power plants, Tk 2.71 at fertiliser factories, Tk 7.76 at boilers in industrial units, Tk 7.42 at tea estates and Tk 17.04 at commercial units.
Amid severe protests, the energy commission raised the prices of natural gas this year saying to increase the revenue earning of state-run Petrobangla by Tk 41.85 billion per annum mainly to pay duties and taxes to the government’s exchequer for the gas supplied by the international oil companies.
Communist Party of Bangladesh and Socialist Party of Bangladesh at a rally in front of National Press Club on Wednesday called for cancellation of the second phase gas price hike and demanded uninterrupted gas supplies to residential areas.
Source: New Age
