Vietnam plans to sell 34.7% stake in major power firm

Vietnam plans to sell 34.7% stake in major power firm

Vietnam plans to sell a 34.7 per cent stake in power producer Vinacomin
Power Holding Corp, worth about 3.3 trillion dong (S$196.9 million), the
government said on its website on Thursday.

The move follows a government order last year to speed up privatisation of
electricity-generating firms.

The state, which owns 99.68 per cent in the country's third-biggest power
producer, plans to reduce its stake to 65 per cent in the first stage, the
government said.

Vinacomin Power, whose charter capital stands at 6.8 trillion dong, went
private and was listed on the Hanoi Stock Exchange last year. The company's
shares were flat at 14,000 dong on Thursday.

The firm produced 4.8 billion kilowatt hour power output in the first half
of this year, up 13 per cent from a year earlier.

Revenue from power production jumped 15 percent to 6.2 trillion dong in the
same period.

In July last year, Vietnam stopped buying electricity from China, given the
increased output from domestic coal-fired and hydropower plants, according
to EVN reports.

Hanoi has been striving to trim stakes in state-owned enterprises (SOEs),
many of which have low profitability, but the progress has been slow given
the small stakes on offer, sizable state control and concerns about vested
interests.

Vietnam's reform drive, however, picked up pace after Nguyen Xuan Phuc was
sworn in as prime minister in April. He has asked privatised SOEs and big
players to speed up listing shares.

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Link to Original Article:
http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/energy-commodities/vietnam-plans-to-sell-347
-stake-in-major-power-firm

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com