VIETNAM: EVN National Power Transmission Corporation (NPT) Credit Rating

EVN, Vietnam’s Electricity Company, needed investments of about $2 billion annually to meet rapidly growing energy demand. However, the government was not willing to provide further sovereign guarantees because of budgetary constraints. With support from the Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF), the Bank’s energy team provided technical assistance to help EVN prepare for an official credit rating. In April 2018, EVN became the first non-banking sector SOE in Vietnam to obtain a positive credit rating from Fitch Ratings that matched Vietnam’s sovereign credit rating of BB. Following this success, EVN requested further World Bank support to prepare NPT, its wholly-owned transmission company, for a credit rating. PPIAF, through its dedicated fund for Subnational Technical Assistance (SNTA), provided financial support to the Bank team and EVN for technical assistance. These efforts paid off — in March 2019, Fitch assigned NPT a standalone credit rating of BB+. This credit rating will enable NPT to tap into the international capital market without government support and will allow it to raise commercial funding by issuing bonds.

*The final output is classified as Confidential. It can be made available subject to formal requests.