Susumu Yoshida from the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry told AFP that direct damage from one single power outage affecting five manufacturers at an industrial park was over US$190,000.
“Total damage among IPs (industrial parks) in northern Vietnam seems to be an unaccountable amount,” he said.
The Southeast Asian nation has struggled with a series of heatwaves since early May when the mercury reached a record high, while rivers and reservoirs at hydroelectric power plants have dried up.
Vietnam relies on hydropower for almost half its energy needs but 11 big plants in the north and central regions have had their power generation severely interrupted in recent weeks.
Two out of three units at one of the biggest in Vietnam, Thac Ba, have stopped functioning.
At the same time, as the use of air conditioners and electric fans surged, there has been “a 20 per cent increase in demand on the network”, National Load Dispatch Centre deputy director Nguyen Quoc Trung said.
“The power shortage has been and will be intense in the north,” until early July, Trung warned at a roundtable discussion in Hanoi late last week.
Trung’s boss, Nguyen Duc Ninh, was suspended Wednesday pending an investigation into the outages.
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In the port city of Hai Phong, several associations representing Vietnam’s logistics and shipping industries – which rely on a digital network to coordinate deliveries and need the power to operate loading equipment and keep trucks cool – filed complaints to state electricity company EVN.
For each power cut lasting over six hours, companies may have to compensate waiting vessels, which pay a docking fee of up to US$50,000 and also face fines themselves for a delay in delivery of the goods, the associations said in a public statement.
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