Rural Electrification Board (REB) constituted under a government ordinance of 1977 and started functioning in 1978. It implements the programmes of distribution of power in rural areas and constructs power distribution line and power sub-stations through Rural Electric Societies (Palli Biddyut Samity- PBS) on the principle of co-operative. Its headquarters are at in Dhaka.

By the end of the year 2000, 424 out of 486 upazilas of the country were brought under the rural electrification programme. The REB constructed 123,581 km of distribution lines, of which 120,947 km had been energised. It also constructed 250 sub-stations (33/11 KV) through which 31,831 villages were electrified and 3,178,987 consumers were given power lines. REB had a plan to form 75 PBS by January 2001 and the achievement was close to the target.

Power transmission distribution network in Bangladesh was confined within the urban areas even just twenty five years ago. At present, the rural people are under coverage of electrification, which created new job opportunities and access to electronic media. This contributed to improvement of the standard of their living. Electricity is now available to operate 86,766 irrigation pumps, 62,875 small and cottage industry units, 373,119 commercial setups and 8,733 other establishments in the rural areas. The rural electrification programme in Bangladesh achieved higher operational standards compared to other utilities in this part of the world. The overall system loss of the PBS is about 16.62% while some of the co-operatives could confine their system loss within 10%. During 1999-2000, average collection of the societies was 97% of billed amount.

The strict adherence to transparency, accountability and the unflinching support of the government, development partners and people associated with the rural electrification programme, REB attained an outstanding standard in the excellence of work. The main reason behind the success was the introduction of the Performance Target Agreement (PTA), which encouraged rural electric societies to improve their performances. Under the agreement at the beginning of each fiscal year, REB negotiates with each society to set a target for performance in some important areas and a bilateral agreement is signed to this effect. If the PBS can attain the target the employees are given bonus up to 15% of their basic salary. On the other hand, failure to attain targets may result in salary cut up to one percent.

The demand for power by REB to implement the rural electrification programme in 1999-2000 was 280.77 MW, which the power development board could not supply. REB incorporated a private company to construct a 210 MW power plant in Mymensingh PBS area to cover the shortage. The plant now generates 140 MW of electricity. The plans of REB include setting up eleven 10 MW power plants, of which three would be built for three PBS area on BOT basis. All the planned plants are scheduled to go into commercial operation in June 2002.

REB set up a 62 KW solar project under a French grant in 1996-98 in the meghna river islands near narsingdi, where the local PBS could not set up power transmission line across the mighty river. Programmes of REB scheduled for implementation during the Fifth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) period at a total estimated cost of $35 billion included construction of 50,000 km of distribution line, power connection to one million consumers of different categories, and electrification of 12,000 villages. These are in line with the government programmes of bringing the entire country under electricity service by the year 2020, making the power sector financially viable and able to facilitate economic growth and increasing the sector's efficiency.

Until January 2001, REB spent about Tk 57.415 billion with a foreign exchange component of Tk 26.895 billion. During the period, REB received $975.91 million of assistance from various development partners including IDA, USAID, JBIC, ADB, KFAED, CIDA, NORAD, SFD, OPEC, IDB, JDRG, Netherlands, Finland, China, Saudi Arabia and France. [Mahbubul Alam]