The proposal was made after the ministry looked into reports of 13 provinces where the hydro projects are planned. 

Of these 324 projects, 64 with total capacity of 226.2 MW have already been approved by provincial authorities for cancellation, while the remaining 260 with 434 MW are proposed by experts to be cancelled due to low efficiency or lacking an investor.

The ministry said it has coordinated with authorities of these provinces since December 2009 in reviewing and re-assessing the hydropower projects.

Accordingly, the ministry and local people’s committees have mutually agreed that cancellation should be made to projects that bring low efficiency, have no investor, have negative impacts on the environment and social life, cause trouble to traffic, or affect the development of other projects.

In general, small hydropower projects bring low returns while causing damage to the environment, the ministry said in its report to the Prime Minister.

The ministry said 324 is not the final figure, since the ministry and local authorities will continue reviewing the development of hydropower projects and propose the Government to cancel any other projects that fail to meet required criteria.

Besides these projects, the country now has 1,110 other hydropower projects with total capacity of about 25,290 MW, the ministry said.

Along with its proposal to cancel the 324 projects, the ministry also asked the Prime Minister to order all local authorities to halt any new small-scale hydro projects until 2015.

Only 102 small hydropower projects with total capacity of 662.8 MW should be carried out in provinces after 2015, the ministry said