DESPITE concerns over prolonged electricity disruptions affecting households and industry, the energy minister told parliament on June 7 that there were no load-shedding, only temporary interruptions. The minister’s remarks however stand in contrast to the realities on the ground across the country. During the Eid-ul-Adha holidays, people from Khulna, Barishal, Rangpur to Noakhali took to social media to report enduring electricity outages lasting as long as 10–15 hours a day. The Cox’s Bazar Hotel and Resort Owners Association recently reported that daily load-shedding of 8 to 10 hours in Cox’s Bazar has forced hotels and resorts to rely on costly generators, reduced service quality, led to around 30,000 booking cancellations, and caused some tourists to leave earlier than planned. On June 7, a severe power crisis hit Narayanganj and surrounding areas after a snapped cable at a grid substation disrupted transmission, causing frequent electricity outages throughout the day. The minister’s response to lawmakers’ questions in the parliament contradicts the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s electoral pledge and signals a continuity of the indifference and apathy towards public suffering seen under the fallen Awami League regime.
The energy minister acknowledged that there are transmission limitations but reiterated that 100 per cent of the population has already been brought under electricity coverage and that the country’s grid-based power generation capacity stood at 28,919 megawatts. The problem in the energy sector is not per capita energy access or its installed capacity, but the financial burden of idle power and a policy that failed to bring relief for the people. The Awami League government invested $33 billion in the power sector, expanding generation capacity by more than fivefold, but the development was uneven as the transmission and distribution system has expanded at a much slower pace, often around 2–5 per cent annually in recent years. A recent assessment by the Energy Regulatory Commission projects that Bangladesh’s capacity payments will rise from Tk 482.6 billion in FY2026 to Tk 526.08 billion in FY2027, pushing unit capacity charges up from Tk 2.38 to Tk 5.46 per kilowatt-hour due to maturing contracts with private power producers signed under the previous government. In this context, the government is reportedly planning to allocate substantial subsidies to the power sector and raise tariffs instead of revisiting energy policy or renegotiating costly contracts with private producers that continue to strain the public exchequer. The crisis in the power sector is therefore not merely definitional, as the energy minister suggests in his emphasis on distinguishing between load-shedding and power disruptions.
The government must abandon its denial strategy, revisit the energy policy already proven flawed and review agreements with private power producers signed during the Awami League government to reduce unnecessary overcapacity, thereby easing the financial burden on both the power sector and consumers.
