The highest retail price of household electricity is still 2,701 VND per kWh.

After many revisions and receiving opinions from ministries, branches, associations..., the draft decision of the Prime Minister on the electricity price structure is still being consulted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.The regulation is divided into 6 steps with increasing prices, although there have been many suggestions to change this calculation method.

With the average retail electricity price of 1,720.65 VND per kWh (excluding VAT) applied from December 2017, the retail price of household electricity for each level is 1,549 - 2,701 VND per kWh. This is also the retail electricity price currently applied after the 6.08% increase adjustment from the beginning of December 2017.

In fact, during the consultation process, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has developed many scenarios for the retail electricity price structure, in which the distance between the electricity price levels is reduced from 6 levels to 3 or 4 levels. Specifically, according to scenario 1A, the retail electricity structure is reduced to 3 levels, in which the lowest level is from 50 kWh with a price of 1,484 VND per kWh; level 2 is 51 - 300 kWh with a price of 1,768 VND per kWh and level 3 is from 301 kWh and above, with a price of 2,559 VND per kWh.

Scenario 2A retail electricity price is divided into 4 levels, the lowest is still 50 kWh subject to price1,484 VND per kWh. Level 2 is 51-200 kWh with a price of 1,668 VND per kWh; level 3 is 201-400 kWh, the price is 2,327 VND per kWh. Level 4 from 401 kWh and up is 2,587 VND per kWh.

The lowest 2B scenario starts at 100 kWh, priced at VND1,506 per kWh, and the highest is still 401 kWh, priced at VND2,587 per kWh.

Commenting on this electricity price list, the Vietnam Electricity Association suggested that the consumption level starting from 101-200 kWh should be used as the base level and equal to 100% of the average retail electricity price to calculate for other levels.

However, the Ministry of Industry and Trade stated that the current 6-step division should be kept, arguing that:Because the retail electricity price for level 1 (0 - 50 kWh) and level 2 (51 - 100 kWh) is calculated at 92% and 95% of the average retail electricity price, respectively, the prices of the next levels are adjusted to increase gradually to compensate for the first two levels and at the same time achieve the goal of encouraging economical and efficient use of electricity.

"Keeping the retail electricity price divided into 6 levels will avoid disruption in reality," the Ministry of Industry and Trade stated its opinion.

The agency also said that,If the scenario of household electricity price including 4 steps instead of 6 steps is applied, it will increase the electricity bill of households with electricity usage below 50 kWh per month, at the same time the amount of budget support for poor households and social policy households will increase by about 258 billion VND per year due to the increase in electricity price of step 1.

Ministry of Industry and Trade analyzes,The increase in electricity bills mostly affects the middle and low income groups using 51-100kWh and 201-300kWh per month, about 8.6 million households, accounting for 36% of the total number of 24.1 million households. Households using more electricity from 300kWh per month or more benefit from the electricity price reduction. This is not suitable in the current period.

In addition, the installation of electronic meters has been deployed nationwide, so the work of recording meter readings and making electricity bills will be more public and transparent. Electricity customers can monitor the amount of electricity used monthly, so problems related to the number of household electricity steps have gradually been resolved through transparent recording of electricity meter readings.