Dhaka: The country’s power generation capacity will go up to 20,000 MW in September next, said Finance Minister AMA Muhith.

Placing the national budget for 2018-19 fiscal year at the Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday,  Muhith described power  and  energy  as the main  priority  sector  of  Awami League government, reports the UNB.

When the government took office in 2009, the power generation capacity  was 4,942  MW, he said adding, ‘We  prepared  the  ‘Power  Sector  Master  Plan’  with  a coordinated  development  strategy  for  power generation,  transmission  and distribution and implemented various activities following this plan.’

Power and energy sectors received Tk 24,921 crore in the proposed budget of fiscal 2018-19 against Tk 24,261 crore in 2017-18. Of this, the Power sector received Tk 22,936 crore while energy sector Tk 1985 crore in the fiscal 2018-19.

Muhith said the government’s target was to scale up power generation to 24,000 MW by 2021 and ensure electricity supply to all at an affordable price.

He said the  number  of  power  plants  rose  to  118  from  27,  while power generation capacity increased by three times to 18,353 MW, including captive power due  to  the government’s  persistent  efforts. 

The Finance Minister pointed out that maximum power generation record reached 10,958 MW from 3,268 MW in 2009.

During last nine years, construction of  2,622  circuit  km  transmission  line,  174,000  km distribution  line  has  been  completed, he said adding that the length  of  present  transmission and  distribution  line  are  10,680  circuit  km  and  450,000  km respectively.

System loss of power has come down to 11 per cent from 16.9 percent during this period.

The Finance Minister said overall the percentage of population under electricity coverage has increased to 90 percent from 47 per cent.

About ensuring energy security, he said the government put  more emphasis on exploration  of  new  oil  and  gas  fields  in  the  country. 

‘We established ‘Gas Development Fund’ in 2009 to assist Bapex  in  exploring  oil  and  gas  exploration  and  conducting seismic  survey  and  established  ‘Energy  Security  Fund’  in  2015  for ensuring energy security,’ he said.

He said with our sincere efforts, the storage capacity of oil has enhanced to 12.21 lakh metric tonnes from 8.9 lakh metric tonnes.  ‘Oil and gas exploration activities were hampered due to financial constraint during previous regime.

‘We’re currently extracting gas from 20 fields. Gas production capacity has increased to 2,750 million cft from 1,744 million cft in January 2009’.

Considering the demand of power and other industries for gas, Muhith said the government took steps to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Two Floating Storage and Regasification Units have already been stablished in Maheshkhali of Chattogram for importing 1,000 million cft LNG daily.