Proposed duty raise on LPG cylinders

THE use of LPG as household cooking fuel is relatively new in Bangladesh. Yet industry insiders say the demand is rising at nearly 400,000 new users every year. With the duty structure on foreign cylinders slated to rise by 5 per cent in the current fiscal, the fear is that consumers may turn to local manufacturers to buy their cylinders. The problem is safety. With little government oversight on the manufacturing process, accidents due to low build quality cannot be ruled out. The consequences of cylinders packed with LPG exploding in a kitchen setting will be explosive, to say the least.
As argued by major suppliers of LPG in the country, the revised duty structure will cost end users anywhere between Tk500 and Tk800 more. When one considers the fact that authorities are unable to provide piped gas outside of Dhaka and Chittagong, the market for LPG is bound to grow with each passing year. With hundreds of thousands of new users adopting LPG as household cooking fuel, safety must be a top priority and concern for authorities. According to media reports, even the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation opts for imported cylinders on safety grounds. Until authorities develop the capacity to properly certify locally produced cylinders to be safe, it would be wiser not to revise the duty structure in a manner that could, potentially, put a lot of end consumers at risk.