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Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation

4 May 2006, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Humayun Hyder, Zikatola, Dhaka
4 May 2006, 18:00 PM
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) is in desperate need of 330 million dollars to buy necessary fuel to run the country for the next two months. For that BPC is literally begging both Janata and Agrani Bank to lend them the required dollars but both banks are reluctant to comply with BPC's request on the plea that they don't have the required foreign currency in their reserves. BPC assured both the banks that it would pay them in local currency but that too is not working. It is worth mentioning here that most of the nationalised banks owe lots of money to BPC and hence they are cautious to lend money to it. In this respect it is not actually the fault of BPC that it is incurring a huge loss. It is the wrong policy of the government that is compelling BPC to lose huge amounts of money. The government in order to woo the poor and a section of people of the country instructed BPC to sell all types of petroleum products at a much lower cost than their actual prices.

And, as a result, BPC is suffering such huge losses. In order to offset the loss the government is contemplating hiking prices of petroleum products but are not sure when to do that. Because the much-vaunted election is round the corner and the government must not do something that upsets the sentiment of the people. What a crazy idea! When prices of everything can go up in this country without any logical explanation why not petroleum products! It is high time that government fixes the prices of all petroleum products in par with the international market in order to save BPC from suffering colossal losses. Furthermore, as soon as the news of increase of prices will reach the people involved in this business, they will raise the prices even before the authorities do it.

Furthermore, this will also stop smuggling of gasoline to other neighbouring countries taking advantage of our cheap prices.

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