Today is the deadline for the Ministry of Industry and Trade to report to the Prime Minister about the electricity price increase.

Today is the deadline for the Ministry of Industry and Trade to report to the Prime Minister on the increase in retail electricity prices. After monitoring the preliminary results of the working groups in the past few days, many people believe that they are still not really convincing. BecauseMost of the responses shared the same reason that the electricity bill increased because households increased their consumption during the month, while the increase in electricity prices was only a small amount, and all units publicly announced their electricity prices...

The crux of the matter is not the evidence that the inspection team and EVN have provided. Consumers are expecting a different answer!

According to Ms. Le Thi Nga - Chairwoman of the National Assembly's Judicial Committee, it is necessary to clarify the basis for increasing electricity prices; which elements in the electricity price structure are reasonable and which are unreasonable; whether the method of calculating the ladder electricity price in the retail price list for household electricity is still suitable for the current period or not; is it true that the more electricity is used in the world, the higher the price?...

Looking back at the electricity price list currently applied by EVN, issued in 2014, at that time there was a lot of controversy, now it has revealed many shortcomings. Specifically, the consumption limit of levels 1 and 2 is very low; the consumption limit of levels 3 - 6 is very high. More importantly, the price of each level is very different, "hitting" the pocket of consumers by "the more you use, the higher the price you have to pay". With an electricity price list like the present, it only benefits the electricity industry, while consumers are "indignant" about paying.

What is the solution? Many experts have given their opinions to ensure that EVN's business harmonizes the interests of enterprises and consumers, however, whether the Ministry of Industry and Trade and this enterprise will accept it or not is another matter.

The reason why consumers are upset is not only because of the unreasonable way of calculating electricity prices but also because of the non-transparent business model, the ambiguous relationship between social responsibility and business efficiency of EVN. Therefore, the first requirement now is that EVN needs to be transparent about the business profit-loss calculation, the Government needs to separate the compensation fund for policy beneficiaries, poor households... by paying directly to those households instead of letting EVN be "ambiguous" as it is now.

Along with that, if the current method of calculating electricity prices by ladder is still applied, it must be recalculated to avoid the support level being too low and the following levels being too high, the distance between the levels also needs to be carefully considered.