By Stuart Grudgings
HANOI | Thu Aug 23, 2012 5:37pm EDT
HANOI (Reuters) – From the rural heartlands to traffic-choked cities, Vietnam Electricity Group is hard to miss. It builds apartments, runs a bank, oversees a stock brokerage, provides electrical power to millions of homes and employs 100,000 people.
Today, Vietnam’s sole retail power supplier, known as EVN, looks badly overextended, according to a senior industry official with knowledge of its business. It is the latest state behemoth to face scrutiny in the wake of debt blowouts that have shaken investor confidence and symbolized the decline of a country once tipped as Southeast Asia’s next economic star.
Some fear that the debt problem at EVN could dwarf that at shipbuilder Vinashin, whose default on a $600 million loan damaged Vietnam’s reputation among foreign investors, although the monopoly has garnered far less international attention.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/23/us-vietnam-statefirms-idUSBRE87M12F20120823
