The electrician's image improves dramatically in the eyes of the customer
Towards Transparency, the official national contact of Transparency International (TI) in Vietnam has released the report Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing the 45 largest companies (TRAC 2018), including 15 foreign invested, 15 publicly listed and 15 state - owned companies. These companies are selected on the basis of the 500 largest enterprises in Vietnam in 2017.
The report investigates three aspects: The extent of information published by companies on anti-corruption program; transparency in organization and ownership structure; and disclosure of key financial information on country – by – country basis. According to the report, EVN is honored to be named as the most transparent state – owned enterprise.
Many people may be surprised with this ranking, because so far EVN has been always viewed as a public monopoly, and now saying it in the top transparent ones seems somewhat unreasonable. So is the ranking of EVN's information transparency convincing?
In searching for information, it is amazing that all the rankings have been conducted by international organizations or independent auditing companies. By the end of 2017, the Doing Business team of the World Bank (WB) released its ranking result of Vietnam's Getting Electricity Indicator (GFA) in 2017 at 78.69 / 100 points, an increase of 32 steps against 2016 and at 64th among 190 countries and economies. This was the fourth year in a row that Vietnam's Getting Electricity Indicator had improved, moving upward 92 steps from 156th in 2013 to 64th in 2017.
Viet Nam's Getting Electricity Indicator is currently ranked higher than some developed countries such as China (98), Canada (105), Mexico (92), Israel (77), Hungary (110), Romania (147), Ukraine (128), etc.
According to the World Bank, the number of procedures for access to electricity of Vietnam is comparable to other countries in Asia Pacific and OECD countries (5 procedures); particularly the handling duration of Vietnam is significantly better, less than half of the average duration of countries in this group (Vietnam: 46 days, Asia-Pacific: 71.6 days, OECD: 79.1 days).
In terms of electricity supply reliability and price transparency, Vietnam got 6/8 points - 3 points higher than 2016 (3/8 in 2016).
The World Bank survey shows that EVN has made many solutions to improve the efficiency of corporate governance, promote the application of scientific and technological advances and better provide electricity services in a more convenient and customer friendly way. By the end of 2017, 100% of EVN's power supply services could be registered online.
In recent years, EVN is ready to welcome independent auditors to conduct auditing of their production and business activities. Recently, the world credit rating agency Fitch Rating has highly valued the financial soundness of EVN and assigned a BB rating to EVN. Online bidding has been widely deployed by all member units and EVN is considered as a well performing state-owned enterprise in this area.
Every year, EVN hires an independent consultant to assess the level of customer satisfaction based on four criteria groups, including 14 specific criteria designed to assess the quality of electricity services and the satisfaction of electricity customers. The results of the independent consultant's assessment show that the average level of customer satisfaction of EVN as a whole has increased over time. In 2013 the average score was 6.45/10 points, this number was 6.9 points in 2014, 7.27 points in 2015, 7.69 points in 2016 and 7.97 points in 2017.
Another VCCI’s survey also found that the application of electronic invoices, online payment, online information searching, etc. were remarkable moves. Mr. Dau Anh Tuan - Head of Legal Department of Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that EVN had focused on reforming their administrative procedures, paid more attention to customer needs. Customer satisfaction assessment, service quality improvement, and customer care programs also receive positive feedback.