The Rural Electrification Board of Bangladesh has been providing service to rural member

consumers for over 39 years. Continued support from the Government of Bangladesh, the
donor community, consulting partners, and member consumers will help this program
continue to expand, providing the gift of electricity to millions more Bangladeshi households,
businesses, and industries.
Rural Electrification Board Act, 2013 has been established instead of Rural Electrification
Board Ordinance, 1977 (Ordinance No. LI of 1977) and The name of Board is Bangladesh
Rural Electrification Board. Which was responsible for electrifying rural Bangladesh. Since its
inception, the purpose of the program has been to use electricity as a means of creating
opportunities for improving agricultural production and enhancing socio-economic
development in rural areas, whereby there would be improvements in the standard of living
and quality of life for the rural people.
Today there are 78 operating rural electric cooperatives called Palli Bidyuit Samity (PBS),
which bring service to approximately 1,77,30,802 new connection being made and more than
3,30,728 kms of line has been constructed.
Enormous changes have occurred in areas all across rural Bangladesh due to people having
access to electricity. The magnitude of changes and the impact of the RE Program is vast
and diversified and information documenting these have become more acute in recent years.
All stakeholders, particularly the Government of Bangladesh and the development partners
need documentation that supports the large funding requirements that are needed to expand
the program further. Given these circumstances, decisions were taken to have this "Economic
and Social Impact Evaluation Study of the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Program". This
Study was begun in March 2002 with the selection of the Human Development Research
Centre (HDRC), an established Bangladeshi consulting firm.
This eight-month Study involved more than 100 male and female qualified enumerators, as
well as a number of data quality controllers. working to collect quantitative and qualitative
data through the completion of questionnaires during the interview of 378 cases in more than
70 villages/thanas in both electrified and non electrified areas of 23 different PBSs dispersed
across the country. in addition, the fieldwork also included 27 "focus group discussion" and
nine "group discussion with the PBS Board and Members". The four major categories of
consumers namely domestic, commercial. irrigation and industry were included when
preparing the sampling sizes for both experimental and control groups. Fourteen different
instruments are designed, field tested, and used for the information collection phases of the
Study.