Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase on Wednesday approved three separate proposals to import three liquified natural gas cargoes from Singapore-based companies to Bangladesh.

Finance minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali presided over the meeting.

As per the proposals, placed by Energy and Mineral Resources Division, state-owned Petrobangla will import two cargoes of LNG from Golbar Singapore Limited.

 Each LNG cargo, having 33.60 lakh MMBtu, will cost Tk 425.81 crore, with each unit at $9.847.

The third LNG cargo will be imported from Vitol Asia (pvt) Limited, Singapore, at a cost of Tk 422.48 crore with each unit at $9.770.

All the three LNG cargoes will be imported from international spot market through limited bidding process under the Rapid Increase in Supply of Power and Energy (Special) Act 2010.

Sources in the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry said that Bangladesh has planned to import a total of 13 LNG cargoes from January to June this year.

Earlier, the government signed ‘Master Sale and Purchase’ Agreement (MSPA) with 22 shortlisted companies to import LNG from the international spot market.

Imports of LNG from the spot market were suspended from July 2022 to January 2023 as the price of LNG from the spot market increased many times while the government was facing dollar crisis.

Currently, the country has been experiencing a severe gas crisis as production came down to nearly 2500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) while the demand is about 4000 mmcfd.

As a result, household consumers in many areas are not getting gas for their cooking while power and industrial productions are being seriously disrupted due to gas shortage.