Power cuts wreck havoc on production plans

Frequent, unannounced power cuts in Mekong Delta are raising the tempers of businessmen to the boiling point, says a report in the market paper Saigon Tiep Thi.

General Director Nguyen Phong Hai has kept a careful record: during a 13 day period, the electric power supply to his Sao Bien Company was cut for six days, from 5 am to 11 pm.

“Don’t electricity companies know that these frequent electricity cuts will reduce GDP growth?” Hai asks. “Did our policy makers consider electricity cuts when they set economic targets?”

The Kien Giang province businessman complains that when businesses are late in delivering products or when the quality of products doesn’t meet the requirements, they must pay a penalty. However, EVN (the national power company) seems not to understand this or want to share difficulties with its business customers.

Hai says that there have always been electricity cuts during the dry season. But never, he adds, have they been so regular as now. “In previous years, electricity cuts occurred four or times a month, and they (the power company) only cut electricity for four or five hours at a time. But now my company has to bear power cuts three days a week and 18 hours a day.”

When the power goes out, Hai’s Sao Bien Company has to run a generator. That’s costing him nearly 30 million dong (over $1600) a month. It also has to spend much money to buy ice to keep materials frozen for processing

Phan Quoc Nam, Director of the Long Uyen Company in My Tho Industrial Zone (Tien Giang) is also angry about power cuts. He told Saigon Tiep Thi newspaper on April 25 that his company has a rush order to process 10 tonnes of mango for export. Nam worries that the company will not be able to fulfill the order because of the frequent loss of power. Sometimes but not always, Nam is informed in advance about the electricity cuts, so budgeting and scheduling is a nightmare.

According to Nam, the company normally spends 500,000 dong a day for electricity. If it has to substitute an electric generator, it costs five million dong for a day’s diesel fuel.

Workers idled

According to Duong Ngoc Minh, his Hung Vuong Company (also Tien Giang) can adapt to electric power interruptions of up to five days a week, but the outages must be announced in advance so that businesses can arrange their time and work. That’s not what’s happening now. Enterprises are not informed in advanced about the electricity cuts and therefore they do not know when they should organize production and when they tell workers to stay home.

Minh said that in the current conditions, enterprises are running at only 50 to 60 percent of their capacity.

The regular power outages at the Ba Dac rice wholesale market area and the rice processing industrial complex in Cai Be district have business owners tearing out their hair. Bui Thach Suong, the owner of a rice polishing workshop at Ba Dac, says that economic activity at the Mekong Delta’s biggest rice wholesale market in Mekong Delta has slowed to a crawl. Small merchants have no rice to deliver to enterprises, hundreds of trucks and ferry boats have no rice to carry, and more than 1000 porters have been laid off and cannot earn money to feed their families.

Saigon tiep thi

Tags: Vietnam electricity, Vietnam energy, Vietnam power shortage