Hanoi  - Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade predicts the country will continue to suffer from a shortage of electricity through 2020, Vietnamese press reported Monday.

Vietnam's rapid economic growth, 8.5 per cent last year, has driven typical demand for electricity up to 13,000 Megawatts, while supply is just 12,000 Megawatts.

"We will always be short of electricity from now through 2020, not just this year or the next couple of years," said Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Do Huu Hao. "We have to pursue rapid economic growth, while resources are limited."

Hao spoke Friday at a conference in Hanoi on energy security hosted by ASEM, the Asia-Europe Meeting. Participants in the conference listed a raft of energy difficulties Vietnam's fast-growing economy faces.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai told the meeting that poor rainfall had left water levels at Vietnam's hydropower plants, which supply 37 per cent of the country's electricity, lower than normal. Meanwhile, the country's huge Ca Mau 1 gas-fired plant is down to 420 MW, half its normal capacity, due to maintenance problems. Blackouts are expected as demand rises in the summer months.

"The number one objective in the dry season is to meet the demand for electricity," Hai said. "The power sector has to do it, even if it has to buy electricity at high prices or using diesel oil to produce electricity."

Vietnam currently imports 400 MW of electricity from China, still not enough to meet demand.

Hai criticized Vietnam's power companies for failing to move faster to build new capacity. New coal and gas-fired plants, as well as some new dams, are under construction, but most are 3 to 5 months behind schedule.

The country's power authority was scheduled to submit plans for the country's first two nuclear power plants to the National Assembly on Monday, but construction will not begin until 2015.

Unexpected blackouts at water pumping stations in Hanoi recently have led to shortages of drinking water in several neighborhoods, the Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien reported Monday. The newspaper quoted a local water authority official as saying water stations had lost power 66 times in the previous two weeks, 46 times without prior warning.

Local newspaper Tien Phong reported Monday that Vietnam's leading maker of electric generators, Huu Toan Co, had seen sales rise 40 to 50 per cent over last year.

In a presentation at the ASEM conference Friday, Pham Khanh Toan, director of Vietnam's Institute of Energy, said increasing the share of energy provided by renewable sources was a priority to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

However, Toan said the share of renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biogas in power generation was slated to rise to just 3 per cent in 2010 and 5 per cent in 2020. (dpa)