Power situation may improve from evening: State Minister

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Anindya Islam Amit expressed cautious optimism on Wednesday that Bangladesh's ongoing electricity shortage would ease somewhat from the evening onward, attributing the anticipated improvement to a strategy adopted since the previous evening, in remarks made to journalists.

Addressing the possibility of securing additional gas supplies through negotiations with Malaysia, the state minister said the government expects to receive at least one cargo of liquefied natural gas, though importing LNG via ISO tanks remains a procedural challenge given the current unavailability of such tanks. He added that authorities were pursuing every available alternative to address the shortfall, acknowledging that citizens rightly expect a clear message from the government but stopping short of offering one himself, saying only that officials were making an exhaustive effort with public suffering firmly in mind and expressing confidence that the public recognised the sincerity of those efforts.

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Noting that domestic production could not realistically be scaled up overnight, Amit disclosed that Bangladesh had also sought cooperation from the United States in securing LNG supplies. He was notably candid in attributing the present crisis to the policy failures of previous governments, arguing that flawed decisions inevitably exact a price, and that successive administrations had pursued short-term fixes rather than seeking durable, medium- or long-term solutions to the country's energy needs. This delayed reckoning, he suggested, had merely been postponed rather than avoided, framing the current crisis as an outcome that had become unavoidable sooner or later.