Power cuts will start next Tuesday across Viet Nam in a bid to cope with the
country’s electricity crisis, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said.

“Electricity of Viet
Nam would start reducing power supplies from next Tuesday but would leave it to
provincial electricity regulators to decide where and when to cut the power,”
said the ministry’s Science and Technology Department deputy director Phuong
Hoang Kim.

The demand for
electricity was forecast to rise by 18 per cent against last year while
electricity production would be down by 14 per cent.

“This year the country
will face a terrible shortage of electricity,” Kim said.

The dry season was
already taking its toll. EVN had reported that major reservoirs in the north
were close to empty and that it had begun releasing water on Tuesday to save
crops for the second and also the last time this dry season.

Two thirds of the rice
crop in the north and north-centre of the nation depended on water from this
release, which would last until next Monday.

To make matters worse,
Kim said, many thermoelectricity projects were behind schedule making it all the
more necessary to conserve electricity.

“All other measures,
such as increasing power supplies, require more time. They cannot be done within
one year,” Kim said.

Meanwhile, Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has urged the nation to save electricity in the face of
such a severe power shortage.

State offices should
take the lead by tightening up regulations on electricity use while factories
and major power consumers must work out plans to save power by at least 1 per
cent, Dung said.

This sector was very
important given that it consumed 10 per cent of sold electricity.

The Prime Minister
also required EVN to improve rural power grids to reduce transmission losses
from the current 20 per cent to 15 per cent by the end of this year and 10 per
cent within the next 4 years.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News