EVN has to pay more than 50 billion VND/day in loan interest, contributing to pushing after-tax loss to a record high.

Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN) has just announced its audited consolidated financial statements for 2023. Accordingly, last year, EVN's total consolidated revenue reached more than VND 500,000 billion, an increase of 8% compared to 2022. Gross profit recorded more than VND 13,000 billion, an increase of more than 20%.

Despite the increase in revenue, in 2023, EVN's after-tax loss will be up to VND26,700 billion due to interest expenses and business management eroding profits from business operations.

EVN will pay VND18,985 billion in interest in 2023, an increase of more than VND4,000 billion compared to 2022 (EVN's interest expense in 2022 is VND14,500 billion). On average, the company has to pay more than VND50 billion in interest every day.

EVN's operating costs are also higher than its core business profits. According to the consolidated financial report, total sales and administrative expenses last year were over VND21,400 billion, of which sales costs "ate" VND6,600 billion and administrative expenses amounted to VND14,799 billion.

In the summary report on the implementation results of the 2023 plan, EVN said that although EVN and its units have made efforts to implement solutions such as cost savings (saving, reducing 15% of regular costs, from 20-50% of major repair costs) and continue to implement solutions to try to balance production and business results.

At the same time, the average retail electricity price has been adjusted up twice (up 3% from May 4, 2023 and up 4.5% from November 9, 2023) but is still not enough to cover the cost of electricity production, so it continues to suffer losses in electricity production and business for the second consecutive year.

According to EVN, the main reasons for the increase in electricity production costs are still high fuel prices. "Although it has decreased compared to 2022, fuel prices in 2023 are still much higher than in previous years," EVN's report stated.

In addition, the structure of power mobilization is not favorable due to poor water situation in hydroelectric reservoirs, causing hydroelectric output to decrease, while increasing the mobilization of coal, oil and renewable energy thermal power plants with higher costs than hydroelectricity. The cost of purchasing electricity in the electricity market is high, and the payment cost is higher than the contracted electricity price.

According to the decision replacing Decision 24 on the mechanism for adjusting average retail electricity prices, effective from May 15, 2024, the time for adjusting electricity prices will be shortened from 6 to 3 months. That is, there will be 4 price changes each year. Meanwhile, the electricity price structure is being reviewed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, proposing to competent authorities for appropriate adjustments to increase competition in the electricity industry.

Source: https://laodong.vn/kinh-doanh/evn-phai-tra-hon-50-ti-dongngay-tien-lai-vay-gop-phan-day-lo-sau-thue-len-cao-ky-luc-1364290.ldo