On Tata's investment offer

The overall impression one can gather from the letters of your readers is that we do not have sufficient gas reserves to meet Tata's demand. Some say we have only 15 or 25 years of gas reserves and Tata's proposed steel mills will devour the major portion of it, leaving us dry in a few years' time. Meanwhile, the Energy Ministry is pointing out the problem of negotiating the right price for supply of gas to Tata for twenty years. This raises a few questions in my mind.

First, since we have limited stock of gas as per experts' analysis then why should we agree to Tata's proposal even if they offer to buy gas at double the market price? Second, why didn't the Energy Ministry tell Tata at the first instance after going through their proposal that we have limited stock of gas and there was no way to accept their proposal?

Saying no to Tata will not affect them, as they are a global player and would seek to invest in some other country but it will certainly send a negative signal to overseas investors that Bangladesh has shortage of energy and investment in heavy industries is not possible there. I think the Board of Investment (BOI) and the Energy Ministry are now in a difficult situation.