Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group on Tuesday broke ground for Ba Thuoc hydropower plants 1 and 2 in the northern province of Thanh Hoa, with a total cost of VND2.4 trillion, or almost US$130 million.
HAGL Chairman Doan Nguyen Duc told the ground-breaking ceremony that the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) would arrange capital and loans equivalent to 60% of the investment of the hydropower plants and the rest would be covered by HAGL.
The two hydropower plants on the Ma River have combined generation capacity of 140 megawatts and will go online from 2011.
Duc expected annual revenue of at least VND500 billion (Around US$27 million) coming from the two hydropower plants, which have eight generators.
He said HAGL would recruit hundreds of people after the Lunar New Year holiday, or Tet, and would have them trained within two years on how to operate the hydropower plants.
“Our policy is to hire most of the future employees in Thanh Hoa,” he said.
The Ba Thuoc project is HAGL’s sixth of its kind under construction. So far, the group has obtained licenses for 13 hydropower projects in Gia Lai, Kontum, Daklak and Thanh Hoa provinces of Vietnam as well as in Laos.
“All of the 13 projects have total designed generation capacity of 420 megawatts,” Duc said. He added that the remaining seven hydropower projects would get off the ground in 2010 and 2011 and construction would be completed in 2013.
“These projects will contribute a big source of electricity to Vietnam’s national power grid and help ease power shortages in the country,” he said in a statement sent to the Daily after the ground-breaking ceremony.
The hydropower project in Thanh Hoa Province is a fresh move northward by the private group, which operates in diverse business copes including real estate, rubber industry, hydropower development and mining.
“Besides hydropower generation, we are exploring ores and investing in property projects in Thanh Hoa, with total investment capital of VND5 trillion planned for these three areas between 2010 and 2014,” Duc said.
He said Thanh Hoa would be the third largest investment destination of HAGL after HCMC and Laos.
HAGL now has total assets valued at some US$1.24 billion. The group reported pre-tax profit of VND1.7 trillion (Around US$92 million) this year and is looking to VND2.68 trillion in 2010.