BANGLADESH

Finance Minister A M A Muhith has admitted that the government made a mistake in assessing the demand for power.

"We made the mistake in calculating the actual electricity demand," he told a pre-budget discussion at a city hotel on Tuesday. "When we estimated the demand to be 5,000MW, it stood 3,000MW ahead of that," he said.

"We had set a target to generate 7,000MW power within 2015. But now we will need to produce 9,000MW," the finance minister said.

Private TV channel Maasranga and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industries had jointly organised the discussion.

The government has been facing widespread criticism over the power crisis. Although 3,000MW has been added to the national power grid over the past three years of the Awami League-led government, load-shedding remains a recurring phenomenon on account of the demand exceeding the supply.

According to the Power Development Board, the country produced 5,100MW on Monday, while the demand on the day was 6,100MW.

'Agri subsidy to continue'

The finance minister said the amount of subsidy for the agriculture sector in the budget for 2012-2013 fiscal would remain the same as in the current budget.

"We'll have to give the agriculture sector Tk 60 billion by way of subsidy. It will remain unchanged in the next budget," he said.

Former Agriculture Advisor to the Caretaker Government C S Karim said, "Production will get affected if farmers do not get fair price for their produce. Its effect will be much more dangerous than that of power or fuel crisis."

He suggested the government not to export rice for now.

Inflation

Muhith also admitted that 'excessive' bank loans taken by the government had impacted inflation.

"It is right that we have taken lots of loan from banks. It impacts inflation," he said.

"But," he added, "inflation is basically caused due to hike in prices of fuel oil and other commodities in the international market."

He also talked of devaluation of taka against US dollar as one of the reasons pushing inflation.