Vietnam power demand wanes as economy loses spark

Vietnam, which for years has been strained by chronic power shortages, for the first time has more electricity than it needs as demand has slowed, a government official said.

“At present we have redundant power supply, demand is expected to grow only 6-7% while generation capacity would rise 14-15%,” Bui Xuan Khu, deputy minister of Industry and Trade, said in a report on Friday.

Khu said the global economic downturn, especially in Japan, the United States and Europe, Vietnam’s key trading partners, had hurt Vietnam’s export manufacturers.

Last year power demand, led by industry, jumped around 16% while supply only rose 12%, forcing the government to import electricity from China and rotate power outages in both Hanoi and HCM City.

Soaring demand had also led top utility group Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) to plan to invest US$3 billion a year to build 33,200MW of new generation capacity by 2015.

So far there has not been any delay in EVN power projects.

 

Category: Economy