Abstract:
Electricity plays a vital role in the socio-economic development and poverty alleviation. It is
considered as the driving force of all development activities. To alleviate poverty in the face of
resource limitations and high population density, Bangladesh requires an economic growth rate of
about 10% p.a. to provide employment to its rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed
by agriculture. In order to achieve this growth rate, availability of a reasonably priced and reliable
source of electricity is a prerequisite.The power sector in Bangladesh faced numerous problems
characterized by lack of supply capacity, frequent power cuts, unacceptable quality of supply,
and poor financial and operational performance of the sector entities. The customer service is not
praiseworthy. There have been a number of reforms in the power sector in Bangladesh since her
independence, but most of these reforms failed to bring desired improvements in the power
sector. The most pressing problem in the power sector has been with the distribution system,
which is characterized by heavy system loss and poor collection performance; however, the
distribution system seldom got the priority in reform initiatives.
