HÀ NỘI — The Prime Minister has approved the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) proposal to cut power bills for enterprises for three months in provinces and cities applying social distancing, according to a Government resolution issued on Saturday.

A 10 per cent reduction will be applied to electricity prices for factories or production facilities maintaining production in the provinces and centrally-run cities which are implementing social distancing under Directive 16.

They include enterprises processing and preserving seafood and vegetables, and enterprises producing export goods with an export turnover of over US$1 billion in 2020.

The reduction will be applied to power bills in September, October and November, the ministry said.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the pandemic is continuing its complicated development in Hà Nội, HCM City and many southern provinces and cities, seriously affecting national socioeconomic development.

Therefore, the ministry and Việt Nam Electricity (EVN) proposed the Prime Minister make the reduction.

EVN estimated that the total reduction for customers this time would be worth VNĐ650 billion.

On June 2, the Government issued resolution No 55/NQ-CP to reduce electricity prices from June to the end of this year to support those heavily affected by the prolonged pandemic, including tourist accommodation facilities. The reduction was estimated to be worth a total of VNĐ1.57 trillion.

Early this month, the Government also approved the reduction of power prices for August and September for households in provinces and cities applying social distancing. The EVN estimated that the total reduction for customers would be worth VNĐ2.5 trillion (US$106.4 million).

There were two similar discounts offered last year. The first ran from April 16 to July 17, 2020 and supported more than 27 million customers with the total reduction reaching around VNĐ9.3 trillion.

The second was from October to December 2020 with more than 25.4 million customers enjoying reductions worth VNĐ3 trillion. —VNS