Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister: The government is taking measures to solve the electricity shortage

Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister says the government is serious about dealing with power shortages and is taking steps to avoid a repeat of last year's widespread blackouts.

He made the remarks on Thursday (May 23) at the 29th Asian Future Forum organized by the Nikkei Group.

In a question and answer session, when asked by the moderator how the Vietnamese government is coping with the power shortage problem, Leong said that the power shortage problem will affect Vietnam's economic growth, so the Vietnamese government is very serious about the problem and has taken measures to deal with it.

Widespread power outages in northern Vietnam last summer resulted in more than US $1 billion (S $1.35 billion) in lost output.

Leem says several factors are contributing to the shortage, including climate change, rising demand for electricity, and a lack of hydroelectric power.

"Power shortages have proven to be a bottleneck to economic growth, as Vietnam knows all too well."

He admitted that the power shortage is not conducive to industrial growth and business investment, and the government has adopted "short - and long-term policies" to deal with the problem, such as the construction of power grid lines in the northern region.

He also said that although the weather in May this year was also very hot, there was no widespread power outage like last year, and there was still enough power supply. "By next year and the year after, I believe it will get better and better."

However, it is reported that the Vietnamese government has called on a number of manufacturers in the north, including Apple supplier Foxconn, to save electricity in order to avoid widespread blackouts during peak power consumption.

Vietnam, whose economic growth is highly dependent on foreign investment, has struggled for years to attract energy-intensive industries such as semiconductor manufacturing and high-end consumer electronics manufacturing such as mobile phones.

In May and June last year, an unprecedented heat wave triggered power shortages in Vietnam, largely disrupting business activities in the north. Preliminary estimates from the World Bank suggest that widespread power outages at the time cost the equivalent of 0.3 per cent of Vietnam's gross domestic product.

In March, Prime Minister Pham Minh Mathieu promised foreign investors that there would be no more power shortages.