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Deputy PM urges banks to fund power plants
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai on July 3 asked State-owned commercial banks to provide sufficient loans for the on-going construction of electricity plants as severe electricity shortages loom on the horizon.
Hai also said banks should immediately negotiate with Electricity of Vietnam in order to achieve a new, market-updated interest rate on prior loans.
“Unless they are able to finalise a new interest rate by this weekend, the State Bank will put forward a compulsory rate. Certainly, we expect both commercial banks and EVN to understand that they have to make concessions in the light of present difficulties,” he said.
Besides demanding EVN use the loans wisely and only for effective and important projects, the Deputy PM also urged the country’s sole electricity distributor to continue in both restructuring its investments and facilitating increased domestic and foreign involvement.
Electricity shortages are expected this month as several new power plants are in need of repairs, according to the Vietnam Electricity Corporation (EVN).
Three plants under the management of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation, Ca Mau I and II and Nhon Trach 1, with a total capacity of 1800MW, are not fully operational.
The Ca Mau II plant has only completed a test run and the Nhon Trach I Plant, built for a maximum capacity of 450MW, has only been able to run one turbine to generate 150MW.
The head of the Ca Mau I plant, Tran Quang Thieu, told the English-language daily Vietnam News that the plant should have come on line at 10 am on July 3 but a problem with the gas system postponed its going operational.
The Uong Bi Thermo Plant increased its capacity to 300MW on May 5, but while doing so encountered a problem that has yet to be fixed.
In addition, the Phu My 2.2 plant also experienced technical problems on June 30.
Other hydro plants have been able to operate for only a few hours because of the extremely low water level in large reservoirs in the south, including the Ialy, Ham Thuan and Tri An plants.
Meanwhile, the National Load and Dispatching Centre said that national power demand would be more than 7,100 million kWh this month.
The centre calculated that the demand would be 230 million kWh per day. The country’s maximum electricity production capacity is between 12,500MW and 12,800MW. Thus, the grid is short of between 1,500 and 2,500MW of power.
The centre warned that it would have to cut supplies from 7am to 9pm every day until the power plants are able to reconnect with the national grid.
VNA
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