Request for transparency in electricity prices
Mr. Nguyen Tien Thoa - Chairman of the Vietnam Price Appraisal Association, former Director of the Price Management Department, Ministry of Finance said that electricity is a very important input of the entire economy. Electricity prices are currently performing multi-purpose tasks: Ensuring energy security, contributing to stabilizing the macro economy, controlling inflation, implementing social security, investing in development...
"All of these goals are focused on electricity prices, it is difficult to regulate these tasks. Although it is difficult, it still needs to be implemented," said Mr. Thoa.
To ensure the above goals at the same time, this expert believes that there are 3 major tasks that the electricity industry needs to do.
First, we must always thoroughly grasp the spirit of "calculating correctly and fully", reasonable and valid costs, and requirements for publicity and transparency of electricity prices. In the immediate future, in order to improve the current price list of household electricity, the level of household electricity will be reduced to about 3-4 levels.
Second, continue to restructure unnecessary units and departments that are still monopoly-free. On that basis, continue to perfect the competitive power generation market, quickly move towards completion and put into operation the competitive retail power market.
Third, the electricity industry needs to continue implementing modern management solutions, focusing on optimization in managing electricity production and business costs, while improving investment efficiency.
The goal is to ensure that all resources and costs for the electricity industry are used economically and reasonably, promoting the highest efficiency, thereby gradually handling backlogs, especially the prolonged financial deficit in recent years.
Many consumer customers are known to have high incomes, so they have to pay high costs
When asked about the issue of reforming retail electricity prices, Ms. Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai - Deputy Head of Electricity Price Management Department, Electricity Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that this is a question closely related to real life, because electricity bills increase, often due to two factors.
Hot weather causes the demand for electricity to increase dramatically, when customers step through the "steps" of the steps, the electricity output at a high level has a higher price. The construction of a terraced electricity price list is gradually increasing for daily life with its own principle.
"Furniture is a special commodity, because the production and consumption process takes place at the same time, and cannot be stored for long as other commodities," said Ms. Mai, analyzing that - in economic principles, when mobilizing electricity, the system will prioritize factories with low production costs to generate electricity first, then to factories with higher costs - until they meet the needs of customers.
That means, the more electricity is consumed, the more the system has to mobilize more electricity sources with higher costs. This leads to an increase in the cost of power supply for the entire system.
According to Ms. Mai, currently, many countries in the world, including advanced countries such as Japan, Korea, or countries in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are applying electricity prices according to the gradually increasing scale of electricity output used and the electricity price of the next scale is higher than the previous scale similar to Vietnam.
"The reason for only applying the scale electricity price to household customers, not to other customer groups such as production, business or administration, career - comes from the nature, unique characteristics and uniformity in the nature of electricity use of the group of household customers.
Using household electricity is characterized by an increase in the amount of use mostly and at the same time at the peak of the power system. This is the group of customers that mainly contributes to the peak of the power system in most countries and it is difficult to adjust the behavior of electricity consumption," said Ms. Mai.
Ms. Mai gave an example, in Vietnam, in the late afternoon after work and study, most people return home to start activities such as cooking, bathing, watching TV or using air conditioners. This timeline is obvious and almost irreversible.
With the economic and technical characteristics of the electricity industry, when increasing electricity consumption during peak periods, the system must mobilize power plants with higher costs to meet load demand.
"The price list of household electricity is divided into stages of electricity consumption, accumulated to increase corresponding to the price increase, that is, the more logical it is used, the more expensive it is. This reflects the difference in the electricity supply cost of the electricity system and the electricity consumption characteristics of household customers," said Ms. Mai.
According to the representative of the Electricity Price Management Department, with the accumulation scale and prices gradually increasing, households with less electricity will pay lower electricity prices, households with more consumption will consume higher prices.
Looking at this logic, the step price list is also exploited in another aspect, which is the application of the principle of the cost-to-users pricing method. That is, many consumers are understood as having high incomes, so they pay high costs and vice versa.
In other words, in terms of social security, the scale of electricity prices for living is one of the tools to support low-income electricity users to consume electricity (meeting their needs) at the necessary level, in accordance with their ability to pay.
Depending on the income and conditions of each household, they will be able to proactively choose the appropriate electricity consumption level, thereby encouraging the use of electricity economically and effectively.
"Because the scale price list for household electricity is a fairly effective price list when at the same time achieving different valuation goals. This is a popular price list and is used quite a lot in the process of building electricity price list structure in countries around the world and is currently still an electricity price list suitable for the actual situation in Vietnam", Ms. Mai affirmed.
