- Bangladesh experienced a blackout after a power grid failure.
- Power shortage is posing a threat to Bangladesh’s recent impressive economic growth.
Bangladesh experienced a blackout after a power grid failure. The blackout started at about 2 pm on Tuesday and affected a considerable part of the country, lasting for about seven hours. This blackout resulted in Tuesday’s early close of business and queues at filling stations as people gathered to buy diesel for powering standby generators. At the same time, few market vendors used candles for lighting. The junior minister for power, energy and mineral resources, Nasrul Hamid, said he regretted the “temporary inconvenience” caused by the power failure. According to the Power Development Board, the power plants tripped, and the power supply tripped off in Dhaka and other big cities.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter and earns more than 80 per cent of its total foreign currency from exporting garments produced yearly. The shutting down of diesel-run power plants that produced about 6 per cent of Bangladesh’s power by up to 1500 megawatts has had a tremendous impact on the country’s garment production. Some factories have had to depend on generators to cope with the power generation. The president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Faruque Hassan, said that the situation has become so bad that garment factories are out of grid power for about four to ten hours daily and the power situation has become so unpredictable. The vice president added that the factories cannot run without power”.
Power shortage is posing a threat to Bangladesh’s recent impressive economic growth. The trend of weak consumer spending due to domestic manufacturing constraints and sluggish export demand, according to Asian Development Bank, is said to slow economic growth to about 6.6 per cent from the previous 7.1 per cent in the current fiscal year.