Ijaz Hossain

Despite the fact that Bangladesh is a small country in terms of area; electricity grid coverage is very poor.

Until recently, load-shedding was something that people in Bangladesh had forgotten – at least in Dhaka.

Renewable energy (RE) comprises of energy from the sun (directly), usually called solar, biomass, wind, tidal, geothermal and hydro.

Energy security is a difficult thing to analyse for a country because it is dependent on many factors. To assist in the analysis, researchers have identified four components of energy security: i) Availability;

In the last five years Bangladesh has been maintaining a GDP growth rate between six and seven percent. Consequently, Bangladesh's energy consumption has been increasing at more than eight percent per year.

Has the finance minister addressed these issues and is this budget adequate to meet the challenges stated above? An equally important issue is this: do the responsible agencies have the capacity and capability of implementing such a large budget?

There was great hope that having tackled the immediate crisis, the government will put the energy sector on a robust track to achieve sustainability. But, it appears that it has been derailed. True, there is no load shedding, and the government will be able to meet increasing demands in the next two to three years, but many issues of the energy sector will plague us for a long time to come.