According to the Vice Minister of Industry & Trade Hoang Quoc Vuong, the arrangements of VWEM (vesting contract allocation, market settlement, cross-subsidy, etc…) will be on-paper modeled. As such, the aim of this step is to maintain the Vietnamese competitive generation market in reality; Developing legal framework: Issuance of the VWEM Rules and development of other regulations; Reforming the electricity sector in accordance with the Proposal and Roadmap approved by the Prime Minister; Developing infrastructure system in accordance with the proposal approved by Ministry of Industry & Trade; Organizing basic and advance training for market participants; Assessing the outcomes of on-paper Pilot VWEM and making necessary revision for the second step of Pilot VWEM.
The Vice Minister Hoang Quoc Vuong said, despite having attained some positive results, the process of pilot VWEM implementation has had some shortcomings, such as the lack of qualified human resources in electricity companies, information and technology infrastructures are outpaced by the market growth. In order to fully implement VWEM by 2019, the Vice Minister Hoang Quoc Vuong stressed, it is necessary to complete the pilot implementation in the remaining months of 2017, at the same time to finalize the infrastructure, as well as to train qualified human resources for related parties in the market. The Electricity Regulatory Authority to finalize the legal framework, in which to include new Circulars on the operation of the Vietnamese competitive generation market. In order to transit to the VWEM, the Electricity Regulatory Authority need to research and set up the appropriate pricing mechanism. The Vietnam Electricity EVN need to have solutions to invest more on the IT infrastructure.
For the period of 2017 – 2018, the pilot VWEM will includes the following: Testing the arrangements of VWEM in reality; Revising, completing the VWEM Rules and relevant regulation; Continuing the sector reform in accordance with the Proposal and Roadmap approved by the Prime Minister; finishing the transformation of NLDC to an independent accounting unit under EVN in 2017; Developing infrastructure system in accordance with the proposal approved by MOIT; in which the VWEM MMS need to be completed and tested; Continuing basic and advance training for market participants; Assessing the outcomes of the second step of Pilot VWEM and making necessary revision of VWEM’s arrangement S (if required).
At present, total investment for IT infrastructure to serve the purpose of operating and monitoring the VWEM is 500 billion VND. The implementation progress is still slow compared to plan, so that in the coming time, EVN will push up effort to complete phases of the projects by 2018. With regard to train human resources, the National Load Dispatch Center of EVN has drastically implemented solutions, which focus on training human resources in fields of finance, institutionary, and electricity market operation.
As of June 2017, Vietnam has 76 power plants taking part in the Vietnamese competitive generation market with total capacity of 20,728 MW, up 2.45 times compared to the period of starting the market on July 2012 with 31 power plants.
