The latest price hike of fuel oils will offer very little help to the government in reducing the subsidies on fuel oils but will put a huge additional burden on the people by raising the living cost.
Experts said the businessmen would use the price hike for profiteering, although the hike was only nominal.
Abu Taleb, a government official, expressed his fear that the fuel price hike would result in further price spike of essential commodities.
Quoting two vegetable sellers discussing at Shewrapara Bazar in the capital, he told New Age that the wholesalers would have to pay Tk 10 to Tk 20 more for transporting 40 kilograms of vegetable from the production ends to the capital and the retailers will increase the vegetable price by Tk 2 to Tk 3 per kg.
Centre for Policy Dialogue executive director Mustafizur Rahman told New Age that the government had increased the fuel oil prices by about 2.5 per cent. ‘It will increase the production cost or supply cost only by 0.25 per cent, if the fuel accounts for 10 per cent of the total cost,’ he said.
The people concerned, including experts, pointed at the transport sector as the key source of possible anomalies.
They said transport businessmen usually raised the fares by several times of the price spike but the government played almost no role in controlling the anomaly.
Bangladesh Petrol Pump Owners’ Association president Nazmul Huq accused the successive governments of not keeping the transport fares at reasonable levels. ‘Every government in the last 10 years had rather allowed transport businessmen to increase the fares without doing any basic calculations,’ he said.
Nazmul told New Age that the latest fuel oil price hike, particularly that of diesel, would increase the fuel cost of oil-driven vehicles by Tk 0.10 to Tk 0.20 per kilometer.
CPD executive director Mustafizur Rahman said the government should take effective measures to reduce the burden of its decision on people.
The government raised the prices of all fuel oils, including diesel, by Tk 2 per litre with effect from Thursday midnight.
According to a statistics of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, the price hike would reduce budgetary deficit created by diesel and kerosene by six per cent and by octane by 25 per cent.
The BPC incurs a loss of Tk 33.44 per litre by selling diesel, Tk 32.49 by selling kerosene, Tk 8.02 by selling octane, and Tk 12.96 per litre by selling furnace oil.
The BPC imports around 3.80 million tonnes of fuel oils, including 1.8 million tonnes of diesel and 1.4 million tonnes of crude oil.
BPC chairman Muktadir Ali said the price hike was a minimum one, considering the amount of loss incurred by the state-run corporation.
Courtesy of New Age
