Staff Correspondent

The Bangladesh government will buy three cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the spot market to cope with the existing energy crisis due to the Iran war at a higher price than that used for importing LNG cargo previously.

The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase approved the import of two cargoes of LNG from South Korea’s POSCO International Corporation and one cargo from the UK’s Total Energy Gas and Power Limited Company.

The cost for this will be Tk 23.31 billion. The shipments will be supplied in June, the Ministry of Finance said in a media release.

The proposal was approved at the 23rd meeting of the committee at the Secretariat on Saturday, chaired by Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.

On May 7, a proposal to buy three cargoes of LNG from the spot market was approved in the 20th meeting of the committee. The 20th, 21st and 22nd cargoes to be delivered in June were purchased from Vital Asia, BP Singapore and Gunvor Singapore. The total cost was estimated at Tk 21.86 billion.

This means that the cost of importing the same amount of LNG purchased in the same month increased by about Tk 1.44 billion.

The World Bank has promised to provide another 350 million dollars in loans to Bangladesh to deal with the instability in the sector due to the ongoing war in West Asia and the increase in fuel prices. The development cooperation agency approved the additional money to help finance the import of LNG on May 15.

The purchase committee meeting on Saturday also approved the purchase of 30 thousand tonnes of bagged granular urea fertiliser and 40 thousand tons of DAP fertiliser.