Staff Correspondent

The government on Friday issued “Fuel Pricing Guidelines” through a gazette notification to set an automated price for petroleum fuels across the country. The system will be effective from March.

Under the guidelines, prices of all petroleum fuels including petrol, diesel, octane, kerosene, furnace oil, jet fuel, and marine fuels will be set automatically based on the international market price.

The local prices will go up and down in line with the international price and every month such prices will be announced by the government for a one-month tenure.

However, the automated pricing is not coming into effect from today (March 1) although State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid had said on Thursday that it would be effective from March.

Energy Secretary Md Nurul Alam also said that it won't be effective from today. “Since we have not yet received the Prime Minister’s approval to make the guideline effective, we’ve to wait for some more days”, he said.

“We hope we'll get the PM’s approval soon and will bring it into effect within 10-12 days”, he told UNB.

The Fuel Pricing Guidelines, however, giving an example of its effectiveness said that if it is planned to be made effective from April 1, the prices of fuels for one month in the international market from February 21 to March 20 have to be taken into consideration to set an average price and then set the price for April.

About such contradictory instructions in the guideline, the energy secretary said that such an automated pricing system is a new thing in Bangladesh. So, the ministry itself is in some confusion.

“We’ll sit with the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to remove all confusion and make the guideline clear to all”, he said. The BPC is the state agency for importing and marketing petroleum products across the country.

In case of setting a price for any of the petroleum fuels, all the expenses including the international market price, import tax, advance income tax and value-added tax (VAT), operational expense, finance, administrative and maintenance cost, margins of BPC, VAT, and sale and distribution costs will be taken into account and then set a price.

A source in the Energy Division said that the price of octane will go below the price of diesel as soon as the automated pricing formula is effective.

“This is also a big concern for the government”, he said, adding that the government wants to keep the octane price higher than diesel”, he added.