State minister for power, energy and mineral resources Anindya Islam Amit on Thursday told Jatiya Sangsad that the government had decided to trial 110MW load-shedding in Dhaka daily to ensure uninterrupted irrigation in rural areas and reduce urban-rural disparity.

Addressing the 20th sitting of the 13th Jatiya Sangsad’s first session, chaired by speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, Amit blamed the current power crisis on accumulated mismanagement by the previous ‘fascist’ government.

He said that while installed generation capacity appears high on paper, it does not reflect actual output.

He said that the country’s peak electricity demand on Wednesday stood at around 16,000MW against a generation of 14,126.35MW, forcing the government to shed about 2,086MW of load nationwide.

The state minister also said that against a daily gas demand of 3,800 million cubic feet, daily production stands at 1,686 million cubic feet, import at 950 million cubic feet, leaving a shortfall of 1,164 million cubic feet.

Despite having sufficient funds, gas imports cannot be increased quickly due to inadequate infrastructure, he said.