Coal price for electricity production may surge 20pct in 2012
At the conference on financial-budget tasks in 2012 that took place in the morning December 24, Vietnamese Ministry of Finance (MoF) announced a number of measures to directly manage and regulate prices in the future with focus on some commodities like coal, electricity and petroleum.
The ministry said it will raise the coal price for electricity production equaling to about 72-80 percent of the coal consumption price in 2010, compared to the current of 57-63 percent.
Vice chair of Quang Ninh City’s People’s Committee, Nguyen Van Thanh, said that of the total revenue 13 trillion dong of Quang Ninh province in 2011, up to 60 percent was made up by coal sector. Therefore, if coal group faces difficulties, budget collection of Quang Ninh province will be also affected. Thus, Thanh proposed MoF to submit to the government to adjust the coal price for electricity production close to the market price (90 percent) in order to remove difficulties for coal group.
Thanh said that Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin)’s coal price for electricity production and the current coal price in the market is different up to 1,191,000 dong and affecting 2.715 trillion dong to Quang Ninh province’s budget collection from coal.
In addition, MoF also said that in next year, the electricity price will be also adjusted up in a reasonable level to offset for the additional costs in 2012 and Electricity of Vietnam (EVN)’s accumulated loss in 2010 due to electricity purchase at high price and high coal price for electricity production.
As reported by EVN sent to the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), in 2010, EVN incurred a loss of 10.162 trillion dong, excluding profit/loss from power companies that were invested by EVN.
Speaking at a press conference held by MoIT recently, both representatives from MoIT and EVN confirmed the total loss of over 23 trillion dong (including loss from business operations and loss from forex rate difference) in 2010 will be calculated in the next electricity price adjustments.
At the answering session to members of the National Assembly, minister of Finance, Vuong Dinh Hue confirmed EVN’s loss from non-core sectors will not be included in the electricity price in next year. Accordingly, the electricity price will only allocate one third for the group’s loss from forex rate difference (or 500 billion dong) and one fourth of EVN’s loss from electricity business operations (equaling to 200 billion dong).
In a latest move, EVN announced as from December 20, 2011, the group would increase average electricity price by 5 percent to 1,304 dong per kWh.
Category: Business
