The draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Electricity Law is being appraised by the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (the drafting agency) proposes to abolish the single buyer model through policies on transferring electricity purchase and sale contracts signed by Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN) to other wholesale electricity purchase units.
With the above content, at the regular quarterly press conference of the Ministry of Industry and Trade on the afternoon of July 7, 2026, Lao Dong Newspaper reporters asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade how to assess the difficulties that may arise in the process of transferring existing contracts. At the same time, what solutions will the Ministry of Industry and Trade have to ensure the rights of the parties?
Answering a question from Lao Dong Newspaper, Mr. Bui Quoc Hung - Deputy Director of the Electricity Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that Vietnam is currently implementing a roadmap to develop a competitive electricity market. Up to now, we have operated a competitive power generation market.
Currently, competition has been operated in the power generation and wholesale stages. However, currently, electricity trading activities are still mainly concentrated at EVN, including EPTC Power Trading Company (under EVN) and power corporations under EVN directly buying electricity from power generation units for wholesale and retail to customers.
According to the electricity market development roadmap, when the competitive wholesale electricity market is fully formed, there will be many units participating in electricity trading, not only EVN-affiliated enterprises but also enterprises belonging to the Vietnam National Energy and Industry Group (PVN); even private enterprises that meet the conditions and capacity according to regulations.
When the competitive wholesale electricity market is fully operated, there will no longer be a situation where only EVN is the sole electricity buyer. Instead, there will be many businesses participating in electricity trading in the competitive market according to the electricity market development roadmap," Mr. Hung emphasized.
Previously, Lao Dong Newspaper had a series of articles analyzing the impact of the proposal to abolish the model of EVN as the sole electricity buyer.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Dr. Nguyen Xuan Quang - Institute of Energy Technology (Hanoi University of Science and Technology) assessed this as a positive proposal. EVN is the only electricity buyer that has existed for many years, but this model is no longer suitable, especially in the context that the current electricity price calculation method plus transmission costs still have many inadequacies.
When there is only one buyer and applying a nearly uniform electricity price across the country, it is clearly not reasonable. To overcome this, it is necessary to clearly separate the components of electricity prices - electricity generation prices, transmission prices, system regulation prices and later energy storage prices instead of putting them together into an average price as at present.
If electricity trading units in each region buy electricity from different sources, and at the same time separately account for and announce transmission costs by region, it will bring two benefits. First, it creates competition in electricity trading. Second, consumers clearly see where the electricity price is, where the transmission cost is, instead of a single unclear number as it is now," said Dr. Nguyen Xuan Quang.
Dr. Nguyen Quoc Viet - public policy expert, lecturer at the University of Economics (VNUHN) said that there will be many benefits in liberalizing the electricity market.
The first thing is that prices and costs will be formed according to market signals, based on the supply-demand relationship instead of being affected by the mechanism as at present. Currently, the determination of electricity prices is still affected by the cost calculation method from a party with a "monopoly" position, then added to the profit margin.
