Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) is to invest $438 million into rural electrification projects in the four years to 2005, the industry ministry has announced. This investment will enable an additional 1139 communes to be linked to the national grid and 320 others to be connected to local generation systems. The government claims this will raise the proportion of the population with access to electricity to 85 per cent.
The investment will be used to upgrade medium and low voltage facilities in order to bring generation costs below the regulated ceiling price. The government claims that at present more than 9.6 million households in 7476 communes have access to electricity, accounting for 75 per cent of households and 84 per cent of communes. In 1996, according to World Bank figures, 68 per cent of households in the north of the country has access to electricity, 33 per cent in the south and 32 per cent in the central region. There is a sharp division between rural and urban consumption.
