For two days, November 30, and December 1, 2015 in Hanoi, the Ministry of Industry and Trade in collaboration with the European Union Delegation in Vietnam, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Energy Research Centre of Asia held a workshop on the legal foundation to be laid for energy statistics in Vietnam. The Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, Mr. Hoang Quoc Vuong attended the workshop.

During the workshop sessions, IEA experts presented their analysis of the current challenges in collecting data and energy statistics, mandated by initial baseline survey and they offered suggestions and shared the best practices in the world to coordinate data collection and statistical authorization. Thereby, it is meant to improve the quality, availability and consistency of data and statistical authorization in Vietnam energy for use by policy makers and project developers.

The workshop is one activity within the framework of cooperation program between the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the IEA in improving the legal framework for data collection and statistics of Vietnam.

According to the experts, Vietnam has made an important progress in the release of energy balance sheet in the past few years. However, the quality and availability of the data in different ministries are disparate; meanwhile a lot of data is not shared between ministries and there is no mandatory regulation to oblige companies to report. In this context, the strengthening of the legal foundation for Vietnam to collect and coordinate data can take more time to overcome the current obstacles.

The workshop is an opportunity to enhance the capacity in collecting and monitoring the data and energy statistics as well as improve the quality, coverage and consistency of the national energy balance sheets of Vietnam and shared across the ministries and international partners.

Immediately to follow the workshop, there was a short-term training to brief on energy statistics and data collection conducted by the foreign experts.

Trong Tan