Bangladesh electricity tariff 2026 — full BERC rate schedule

The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) does not set electricity tariffs by simple decree. Each revision follows a formal process that starts with a tariff petition from the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and the distribution companies — DESCO, DPDC, NESCO, WZPDCL and the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board — laying out their projected revenue requirement for the coming year. That requirement is built from the bulk purchase cost of power (what the distributors pay generation companies and the national grid operator PGCB for transmission), operating and maintenance costs, depreciation on distribution infrastructure, and a regulated return that keeps the utilities financially able to invest in network upgrades. BERC then holds public hearings where consumer groups, business chambers and civil-society representatives can question the assumptions before the commission issues a tariff order in the official gazette.

The result is a single national schedule of categories — LT-A for homes, LT-E for shops, LT-C1 for small industry, and progressively larger MT, HT and EHT classes for heavier users — rather than a different price per distributor. This is a deliberate policy choice: it means a household in rural Rangpur under BREB and a flat in Dhanmondi under DPDC pay identical per-unit rates for the same consumption, even though the physical cost of serving them differs. Cross-subsidy between categories is also built in on purpose. Residential lifeline and lower slabs are priced below the true cost of supply, while higher residential slabs, commercial and some industrial categories are priced above cost to cover the gap. That is why the jump from the 401–600 slab to the 601+ slab in LT-A is so steep — it is designed to both discourage very high household consumption and to fund the concessional rate lower down the same schedule.

The demand charge — a flat monthly amount per kW of sanctioned load, billed whether or not you consume any energy that month — exists because the distribution network has to be built for your peak possible draw, not your average one. A shop that sanctions a 10 kW connection forces the utility to size the transformer, service cable and protection equipment for 10 kW even in a month it barely uses power. Removing the demand charge and folding that cost purely into per-unit energy rates would shift the burden from heavy, spiky users onto steady, efficient ones. It is also the reason utilities encourage customers to right-size their sanctioned load: keeping it far above genuine peak usage means paying every month for capacity you never draw.

Looking at how the schedule has moved over the past decade, tariff revisions in Bangladesh have trended upward in nominal terms, driven mainly by the rising cost of imported LNG and furnace oil used in some power plants, taka depreciation against the US dollar (much of the sector's fuel and capacity payments are dollar-linked), and the fixed capacity payments owed to independent power producers regardless of how much electricity they actually generate. Retail tariff increases have generally lagged bulk tariff increases by a few months to a year, which is part of why distribution companies periodically report revenue shortfalls between hearings. For consumers the practical takeaway is that per-unit rates are unlikely to fall in nominal terms; the more durable lever for controlling your own bill is managing consumption and sanctioned load rather than waiting for a cheaper schedule.