From: Nhan Tran <tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com>
Subject: NEWS: VN seeks foreign loans for electricity grid
Originator: daemon@media.mit.edu
Reply-To: tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com
Organization: N/A
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 18:33:43 GMT


VIETNAM SEEKS FOREIGN LOANS FOR ELECTRICITY GRID

    By Kathleen Callo
    HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, April 16, Reuter - A nationwide electricity grid
designed to ease southern Vietnam's chronic power shortages is to be built with
foreign help, a local expert has said.
    Some 30 companies, including firms from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea,
Australia and France, want to take part, he said.
    The 1,500-km (900-mile) north-south power line will cost $300 million and
require 110,000 local workers and two years to build, said Le Quang Huyen,
director of the Ministry of Energy's power investigation and design company no.
2, which will construct the 500-kilovolt transmission line.
    The project is seen as Vietnam's most ambitious undertaking since workers,
soldiers, guerrillas and farmers built the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Vietnam war.
    The World Bank has estimated that the line, which will run through jungle
and mountain ranges, will cost $560 million to build, Huyen said.
    "It's a big project but we have no other way," he said in Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam's commercial centre, late on Wednesday.
    An acute electricity shortage in the south has left most of the city without
power for four days a week since February.
    National assembly deputies debated the problem before they finished a
twice-yearly session in Hanoi on Wednesday.
    Electricity is plentiful in the less-developed north but many manufacturers
in Ho Chi Minh City have had to buy generators or put workers on night shift
when power is available.
    "One of the biggest threats at the moment to the economy in the south is the
power shortage," John Brinsden, Vietnam representative of Britain's Standard
Chartered Bank, said.
    A 28-year-old U.S. embargo denies Hanoi loans from the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund or the Asian Development Bank.
    Vietnam needs to rebuild its war-shattered infrastructure and can wait no
longer for electricity, Huyen said.
    "We will get loans from foreign countries. Many companies, many banks in
capitalist countries are willing to help," he said. He declined to be more
specific.
    The grid will bring power south from Hoa Binh, a Soviet-built hydropower
plant near Hanoi that produced 3.3 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in
1991.
    The Soviet-built Tri An hydropower plant in the south, which produced 1.7
billion kilowatt hours last year, cannot keep up with growing demand in that
region, especially in the dry season from December to May, Huyen said.
    Vietnam produced 9.2 billion kilowatt hours in 1991.
    The end of Soviet-bloc aid interrupted plans to build nine smaller plants in
the south, he said.
    Vietnam hoped to complete a hydropower plant by June 1994 in Thac Mo, Song
Be province, that would produce 600 million megawatt hours. This would depend on
financing, Huyen said.
    Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet inaugurated construction of the north-south
transmission line with great fanfare this month.
    Some national assembly deputies have since questioned whether Vietnam is
rushing into something it cannot afford.

From: hai@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Hai Vo-Ba)
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 02:11:45 GMT
Subject: Re: [Joke] Story from a Customer Who Wanted to Buy From DEC But Couldn't.
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA