Power Restored In Bangladesh After Blackout

Electricity supply across Bangladesh has been restored after the country plunged into a blackout following the failure of its national power grid.

The blackout, which affected much of the country, started at 2 pm on Tuesday and lasted for long before power was completely restored, Aljazeera reports on Wednesday.

Many large shopping malls in the capital, Dhaka, closed early on Tuesday evening.

Elsewhere, people gathered at fuel stations to collect diesel to run standby generators and market vendors operated amid candlelight.

Over a third of the country’s 77 gas-powered units were short of fuel, government data showed on Tuesday.

The diesel-run power plants produced about 6 per cent of Bangladesh’s power generation, so their shutdowns cut output by up to 1500 megawatts.

Bangladesh’s recent impressive economic growth has been threatened by power shortages since the government suspended operations of all diesel-run power plants to reduce costs for imports as prices have soared.