Vietnam Govt says no to EVN proposal of increasing electricity prices

Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh said on the sideline of the National Assembly meeting yesterday Oct. 20 that the time to raise electricity prices will be carefully considered and the Vietnamese government will never allow for the increase of power prices to compensate for non-core sector investment of EVN.
According to Ninh, the issue of increasing electricity prices will be taken into account to fit to handle the harmony of interests between businesses and people and meet the task of combating inflation. “Each one has a different opinion, the Government will have to choose a harmony, the most important problem is to ensure capital for investment,” Ninh said.

Because in fact, Ninh stressed, at present, EVN cannot call for capital because the electricity sector still suffers losses which investors should be afraid. As scheduled, electricity prices will increase gradually, according to a certain extent, and price hikes cannot be maximised up to 62% to offset losses of EVN.

“Also, there will be no specific basis to just increase electricity prices in every 3 months, and power price increase should depend on economic conditions. From March until now, electricity prices have not been adjusted to give priority to inflation control, solving problems in production and people’s life,” said Deputy Prime Minister.

Before that, public opinion showed concerns over EVN’s latest proposal to increase electricity prices from early November.

However, sources from EVN confirmed that in October and November, there will be no electricity price increase.

As reported by the head of state-owned enterprise management agency in mid-September, the Electricity of Vietnam has invested in the external sector with 2.8% stake, equivalent to 2.1 trillion dong.

Till early March this year, electricity prices had increased 15.28% year-on-year. – Source: Vietbiz24.com

Tags: Vietnam energy, Vietnam energy industry, Vietnam Energy sector

Posted by VBN on Oct 21 2011. Filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry