Bangladesh, Sept. 24 -- State-subsidy issue may stand as a big barrier in negotiating next IMF lending programme for Bangladesh as the government is forced to spend huge sums to supply subsidised energy and power in crunch time.

Finance officials foresee such probability ahead of the credit negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month or early November.

The IMF had kept cajoling the government for cutting down subsidies for power and energy sectors under its previous US$5.5-billion credit programme for Bangladesh that the current government scrapped few months after coming to power.

In the last fiscal year, according to Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, subsidy spending for the power and energy secto...