State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said the price of furnace oil will be reduced within a week.
The minister told this to the reporters at secretariat on Monday.
“The government has decided to reduce the price of furnace oil using for the power plant and industries. However, the proposed price reducing rate will also be informed within a week after verification.”
Responding to the reporters' query, the state minister said the decision raised only for reducing the price of furnace oil, but no decision came for petrol, diesel, octane and other fuel oil.
“The government has taken a good decision,” Prof Dr Badrul Imam, a teacher of geology department at Dhaka University, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He, however, said this decision would be taken earlier in this regard. If the price of furnace oil is reduced, then the government does not need to increase the price of electricity as per the proposal of the electricity distribution companies, he said.
The country’s state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) imports the oil from 13 international companies.
At present, the BPC imports about 1.2 million tonnes of crude oil and 4.2 million tonnes of refined oil from abroad while around 300,000 tonnes of petroleum products are received from different gas fields and private fractionation plants.
Crude oil is processed only in the Eastern Refinery to produce diesel, petrol, octane, furnace oil and LPG.
The BPC had adjusted oil prices upwards in 2013 when the rate of the commodity per barrel rose to $122 in the international market. It fixed per litre octane price at Tk99, petrol at Tk96, diesel at Tk68 and furnace oil at Tk60 at the time.
The state-owned enterprise has been maintaining the same prices though the oil price dropped to less than $40 a barrel globally in last two years.
An official with the BPC said the government now makes Tk27, Tk26, Tk34 and Tk37 per liter on average by selling diesel and furnace oil, kerosene and jet fuel, petrol and octane respectively.
The last time, the price of oil was lowered was in 2008.
