The government has slashed furnace oil price in local market by 19 per cent to Tk 34.03 per litre from the previous price of Tk 42 per litre. The price cut is retrospectively effective from June 26 in line with the instruction from the Energy and Mineral Resources Division under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, said a senior official. The state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) board will approve the price cut of furnace oil in its next meeting, he added. Prices of other petroleum products, including diesel, kerosene, petrol and octane, however, remain unchanged. Import price of furnace oil by the private sector currently hovers around Tk 17 per litre. With the newly-imposed tax by the National Board of Revenue (NBR), the price will be around Tk 29 per litre, market insiders said. Furnace oil is mostly used in power plants in the country, and mainly consumed by privately-owned power plants. Private sector annually imports around 32 million tonnes of furnace oil to generate around 4,500 megawatts (MW) of electricity. They get 9.0 per cent service charge as incentives to import the fuel on their own. The BPC imports around 500,000 tonnes of furnace oil to generate electricity in the government’s power plants. The corporation also provides around 400,000 tonnes of furnace oil from its lone crude oil refinery to the public sector power plants. The government had earlier reduced the price of furnace oil on March 31, 2016 through an executive order. Then the price was slashed by 30 per cent to Tk 42 per litre from its previous rate of Tk 60 per litre. Currently, the pump price of octane and petrol is Tk 89 per litre and Tk 86 per litre, respectively, while the price of diesel and kerosene is Tk 65 per litre.
