Loss of more than 44,000 billion, EVN proposes to include it in electricity price to reduce loss

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has just submitted a Document to the Government on the Draft Decree amending and supplementing Decree 72/2025/ND-CP dated March 28, 2025 of the Government on the mechanism and time for adjusting average retail electricity prices.

In the submission, the Ministry of Industry and Trade stated that the mechanism for adjusting the average retail electricity price is currently implemented according to Decree 72. Recently, Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN) has implemented the construction, calculation and adjustment of the average retail electricity price annually in accordance with regulations. This approach brings many positive points in terms of transparency, convenience, and helps to remove obstacles, making the adjustment of electricity prices more timely and flexible than before.

However, through the actual implementation of Decree 72, there are still some contents that need to be considered and adjusted to ensure the principle of correctly and fully calculating reasonable and valid costs in the process of determining and adjusting retail electricity prices.

Therefore, EVN recommends that Decree 72 should be amended and supplemented to allow the recovery of direct costs for electricity production and supply that have not been fully calculated and compensated in the previous average retail electricity price based on the results of the announcement of electricity production and business costs or annual audited financial statements.

Retail electricity prices need to be resolved promptly for electricity units to recover sufficient costs, contributing to preserving and developing business capital of enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary to draft a Decree amending and supplementing Decree No. 72 to continue perfecting regulations on the mechanism and time for adjusting average retail electricity prices.

The average retail electricity price will be adjusted up by 4.8% from May 10, 2025, to more than VND2,200/kWh. Photo: Hoang Giam

The Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the objective of drafting the Decree amending and supplementing Decree 72 is to continue to perfect regulations on the mechanism for formulating, calculating and adjusting average retail electricity prices. This is to ensure that electricity prices closely reflect reality and are promptly updated according to fluctuations in input factors.

During the drafting process, the Ministry of Industry and Trade thoroughly understood the viewpoint of having to comply with Electricity Law No. 61/2025/QH15 and related legal regulations.

In addition, the revised contents focus on electricity production and business activities, creating conditions for enterprises to recover sufficient reasonable and valid costs arising in practice. The draft also requires that cost criteria must be clear, public, transparent, feasible and have full basis in the implementation process, including costs arising due to objective reasons that the electricity unit cannot control but have not been fully calculated in the electricity price.

The scope of the draft focuses on amending and supplementing Point g, Clause 2, Article 4 of Decree 72, while the subjects of application remain the same as Clause 2, Article 1 of this Decree.

Notably, this draft proposes to allow calculation and allocation into electricity prices of previously uncompensated electricity production and supply costs.

According to EVN's report, due to the impact of the geopolitical situation, the high cost of purchasing electricity in the period of 2022-2023 caused many difficulties for the enterprise, with an accumulated loss of about VND 50,029 billion. By the end of 2024, the accumulated loss of the parent company EVN will still be about VND 44,792 billion, reducing State investment capital and not preserving State capital in the enterprise.

EVN proposed that the Minister of Industry and Trade report to the Prime Minister to allow calculating this accumulated loss as a cost allowed to be included in the average retail electricity price.

In addition, other costs that have not been fully included in the electricity price are also proposed to be allocated, including costs directly serving electricity production and supply determined according to annual audited financial reports from 2022 onwards. EVN proposes an allocation plan, reports to the Ministry of Industry and Trade for consideration, and if necessary, consults with the Ministry of Finance.

In addition, there are also unrealized revaluation exchange rate differences and unpaid exchange rate differences for power plants under power purchase agreements.

The amendment and supplement of the above content is consistent with Point a and Point c, Clause 2, Article 32 of the Electricity Law: "Retail electricity prices are reflected and adjusted promptly according to actual fluctuations in input parameters, compensating for reasonable and valid costs with reasonable profits to preserve and develop business capital of enterprises, consistent with socio-economic conditions and the level of competitive electricity market", the Submission clearly stated.

Auditing state-owned enterprises: A series of "big guys" with losses of tens of thousands of billions revealed According to the results of the audit of state-owned enterprises, a series of "big guys" were named when they had losses of up to hundreds of billions, even tens of thousands of billions of VND.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/lo-hon-44-000-ty-evn-kien-nghi-duoc-tinh-vao-gia-ban-dien-de-giam-lo-2432847.html