Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood has informed parliament of an improvement in the load shedding situation following the previous shutdown of two power plants due to a technical glitch and an inability to unload coal.

Speaking at a session chaired by Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad in parliament on Monday, Iqbal said that the gap between electricity generation and demand has narrowed to 339MW.

However, the minister did not clarify whether the two power plants had been restarted.

He said, “Yesterday, I gave a speech in parliament about a crisis in the country. Two of our power generation plants were shut down, due to which we had to impose load shedding yesterday.”

“By the grace of Allah, today I can happily inform the House and the people that now our power generation is 14,500MW and the demand is now 14,839MW. My load shedding will now be 339 MW.”

Stating that efforts are being made to reduce this deficit, he said: “We are trying to reduce this 300MW as well and I hope we will do so. There will be load shedding in some places. We are trying to ensure that it does not happen.”

Stating that the situation has improved compared to the previous day, Iqbal said, “Yesterday was bad. Today, by the grace of Allah, we have been able to overcome it.”

On Sunday, in a statement given in parliament under Rule 300, the power minister had said that about 3,000MW of electricity had been taken out of the national due to the shutdown of two power plants.

He said that one of the plants had to be put on “forced shutdown” due to a leak in the boiler tube. The other plant had coal in stock, but it could not be unloaded due to rough waters in the Bay of Bengal, forcing it to shut down as well.

He had told parliament: "This has taken out about 3,000MW of electricity from my transmission line."

As a result, load shedding had been imposed in various areas, including Dhaka, the power minister said that day.

At that time, he said that he would make a statement in parliament after discussing the matter with the Leader of the Opposition Shafiqur Rahman.

"This is a national crisis. Let us all work together to overcome this crisis,” he said.

The minister had also expressed hope that the situation would improve within two days.

While reporting improvements in the situation, Iqbal did not provide any information on the names of the two closed power plants, their production capacity, or their latest status of their operation.