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Hydropower plant investors offer to sell projects ‘cause of lack of capital
A lot of small and medium scaled hydropower plant projects (with the designed capacity of less than 30 MW) have not made any moves after they got investment licenses, because of the lack of capital.
Since investors of the hydropower plants still cannot arrange sufficient capital, they have to offer the projects for sale, when the construction has not been started yet. Especially, even the half-done plants have also been put on sale by the investors in an effort to stop loss.
The information was confirmed by Do Duc Quan, Deputy Director of the Energy Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in his phone conversation with Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam on October 28 afternoon.
According to Quan, there are nearly 200 small and medium scaled hydropower projects which have got the approval from competent agencies. However, only 20 percent of them have been implemented.
The problem is that a lot of investors cannot mobilize capital for their projects. Some investors can borrow money from banks, but the overly high commercial interest rates, which would lead to the low profitability of the projects, have discouraged a lot of investors.
“A lot of hydropower investors in the northern province of Cao Bang have said they want to transfer the projects due to the lack of capital,” Quan said.
In general, in order to build a hydropower plant with the capacity of 10 MW, the investors should spend 250-300 billion dong. If the bank lending interest rates are between 10 and 13 percent per annum, the investors would be able to take back the investment capital after 10 years of running the hydropower plant. However, with the current high interest rates of 20-22 percent, investors can be sure of the loss they would incur when developing the projects.
“Small and medium scaled hydropower plants can only churn out 2-3 percent of the total electricity volume needed by the whole country. However, if the projects cannot be implemented or slow in implementation, this will seriously affect the electricity supply to the national grid,” Quan has warned.
Nguyen Van Nha, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam-Laos Economic Cooperation Joint Stock Company in Nghe An province said on October 28, that due to the financial problems, the company has decided to halt the implementation of the two projects – My Ly and Nam Mo 1.
Prior to that, My Ly and Nam Mo 1 projects with the designed capacity of 345MW to be located on the bordering areas of Vietnamese Nghe An province and two Lao provinces of Huaphanh and Xieng Khuang were approved by the Lao government, while the Vietnam-Laos Economic Cooperation Joint Stock Company was chosen as the investor.
In the latest news, the Electricity of Vietnam has warned about the possible electricity short supply in the dry season, calling people to save electricity.
The participants at a meeting held recently at EVN got surprised when hearing that if the 220 KV station cannot be put into operation as scheduled, Hanoi would have to see 15-20 percent of additional charge cut in 2012. The problem is that Vietnam does not lack electricity, since the Son La hydropower plant has got ready. However, with the current situation of the grid, the lack of electricity in Hanoi proves to be unavoidable.
EVN has estimated that in 2011-2015, the demand for electricity in Hanoi would increase by 12.7 percent per annum. With the current grid, Hanoi would have power for the last months of the year. However, the electricity shortage may become more serious in 2012.
vietnamnet, TBKTSG
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