Tuesday, 18 December 2012 15:40
THE BANGKOK POST
The Thai and Myanmar [Burmese] governments agreed to raise funds to
finance the development of the massive Dawei deep-sea port and special
economic zone project during a key meeting in Myanmar on Monday.
The governments' infusion of cash is expected to prove to international investors that Dawei is a sound investment.
It was agreed that once funds are in place, construction will begin between April and the end of next year.
The
delegation, which met Myanmar President Thein Sein, included Deputy
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, Deputy
Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong, Transport
Minister Chadchat Sittipunt and Energy Minister Pongsak Raktapongpaisal.
Ms
Yingluck told the meeting her government fully supported development
projects in Dawei. She hoped her trip would boost the project and give
the businesspeople who accompanied her more information about the
various development projects and the city.
The Dawei project has
made progress since both governments formed a joint committee for the
development plans last month, Ms Yingluck said.
Thailand plans to open a consulate in Dawei to ease investment, she said.
The
Thai-Myanmar Joint Coordination Committee is reviewing technical data
and working out details about how to attract investment to Dawei, but
the investment details are not yet finalised.
She expects the
committee will finish reviewing the project details by February next
year and both countries could sign a framework agreement and their
sectorial agreement on the project in March.
Both countries hope to start fund-raising in April next year, with initial construction beginning shortly after.
Ms
Yingluck and Thein Sein said a full partnership between the countries
will assure development projects in Dawei will be completed in an
environmentally friendly manner.
In July, the two countries
signed a memorandum of understanding to create a special economic zone
for Dawei, with Bangkok agreeing to provide security, infrastructure and
logistical assistance.
The project—led by Thailand's largest
construction contractor Italian-Thai Development—is expected to bring
foreign investment into Myanmar as it emerges from decades of military
rule, and provide Thailand with a gateway to the Indian Ocean and to
Western markets.
But it has faced funding difficulties as Italian-Thai continues to seek investment partners.
Resistance
has also come from locals. "Thai investors are afraid and hesitating
about Myanmar's political policies and the funding," Italian-Thai
marketing manager Pravee Komolkanchana said before the visit. "Thai
banks are less likely to lend money if it is to invest in other
countries, especially in Myanmar."
Potential Myanmar investors are also wary, according to a businessman in Yangon who did not want to be named.
"We dare not invest there because of the costs. We would have to pay Thai salary rates," he said.
"The project won't benefit Myanmar much, but mainly Thailand."
Work
has yet to progress beyond the construction of new homes for the
thousands of villagers due to be resettled, but the developers hope to
begin work on infrastructure and factories next year.
Opponents
to the plan were emboldened by Thein Sein's decision last year to
suspend construction of a $3.6-billion Chinese-backed hydropower project
in the northern state of Kachin—a rare response to public opposition.
But
local resistance to Dawei appears to have eased, although some
villagers are still reluctant to move despite the offer of new homes.
"We understand that we cannot stop the whole project," a local
environmental activist said.
During the meeting, Thein Sein
agreed to a long-standing Thai request to have the Dan Singkhon border
passage at Prachuap Khiri Khan developed into a permanent crossing.
Ms
Yingluck has promised to support the building of a highway from
Myawaddy via Kawkareik to Mawlamyine, and to revive an old railway near
the Three Pagoda border crossing.
This article first appeared in The Bangkok Post on December 18, 2012.
Link: http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8589-thai-burmese-govts-back-dawei-project.html
Dawei Project Watch
Monitoring, Protecting and Seeking Justice for residents
Dowload Statement of "Stop Patronizing Dawei Project"
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Reconsider the Dawei project
- Published: 19/12/2012 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: News
The flying visit to Myanmar by Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra on Monday had more of a look of desperation about it
than confidence. It revealed deep trouble for the plan to build a
deep-sea port at Dawei. The Dawei deal is short of money, backers,
business confidence and popular support. Ms Yingluck deserves some
credit for revealing these problems, although that was probably not her
intention. She should put this undertaking on hold to allow a reset and
rethink of the Dawei project.
Dawei is one of those programmes that seemed like a good idea in very
tight and rarefied business-government circles. The more it has been
exposed to public scrutiny, the less attractive it appears. On the one
hand, it sounds like a good idea to send Thai goods on a short trip
overland for shipment from Dawei, instead of routing ships for two or
three days through the crowded Malacca Straits. But so does the
50-year-old plan to build the Isthmus of Kra canal.
The Dawei project has gone from enthusiasm to realism in the past
year. The would-be source of funds is Japan, and it has dropped out. The
would-be builder is Italian-Thai Development Plc, whose spirit has
sagged in direct relation to its chances of getting reliable funding.
Groups in Myanmar, Thailand and outside the region are concerned about
the predictable damage that will be done. The Myanmar people have shown
no enthusiasm for the claimed business prosperity, and Myanmar business
circles have switched their attention to Thilawa, a planned and probably
feasible economic zone near Yangon.
No one has bothered to ask the 140,000 people of Dawei how much they
like the idea of a deep-sea port, planned much like the Thai eastern
seaboard models of Laem Chabang and Map Ta Phut. The biggest difference
is that few Thais resided in those areas in the 1980s when construction
began. The second biggest difference is that there is much more
attention given to the environment in 2012. If plans to build the port
go ahead, so will strong opposition from Myanmar and foreign
environmentalists.
Then there is the money. At first, the $8 billion seed money was to
have been borrowed in Japan. But on Monday, Ms Yingluck made official
what many have suspected for months. Thai taxpayers will pick up
enormous guarantees to build the Dawei port. It is clear they also will
finance actual construction if outside funds are not found, and so far
they have not been.
To recap, business will not (or cannot) fund the construction, and
neither can Myanmar. Foreign and local builders both favour the Thilawa
project over Dawei. Ms Yingluck remains enthusiastic, to the point where
she has decided to spend Thailand's national coffers, when Myanmar
cannot or will not spend on it. The environmental damage will include
tens of thousands of displaced people, harm the ecology of the marine
environment for hundreds of kilometres, and cause known and unknown
damage to the sea.
Clearly, as shown by the prime minister's trip to Dawei on Monday,
evidence and facts are rapidly building against the Dawei deep-sea port.
Ms Yingluck would help the people of Dawei, Myanmar and the reputation
of Thailand by calling "time" on the project for a while. That would
allow a proper study and public input on whether to build or abandon the
Dawei port.
Link: http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/326849/
Burma wants to downsize Dawei, says Thai daily
Wednesday, 19 December 2012 11:47
Mizzima News
Thailand’s The Nation reported on Wednesday that Burma’s government has “caused Thailand concern” by proposing a significant reduction in the overall area of the Dawei Special Economic Zone from 204.5 sq km to 150 sq km.
“Thailand has responded to the proposal by saying it is already in the
process of a feasibility study on the Dawei Deep Sea Port and Dawei
Industrial Estate Project based on the original proposed size of the
project,” The Nation quoted Thai Transport Minister Chatchart Sithipan as saying.
The news comes just a day after Burma’s President Thein Sein and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters in Dawei that both governments would back the multi-billion-dollar project and would actively seek investors.
The Nation went on to quote the Thai Transport Minister as saying: “This is the first meeting in which Myanmar's president clearly said he would invite a third country, likely Japan, to join in the investment. It is a benefit, as Japan has long-term funding sources for investment in infrastructure, including the port and roads.”
Thailand is committed to 35 percent of the US $9 billion-dollar industrial zone set to be located in Burma’s southern Tenasserim Division.
Due to begin in April, the Dawei project involves a deep-sea port, power plants and factories. The Thai investment also includes financing for a highway to run from Dawei on Burma’s Andaman coast across the Thai border to Kanchanaburi and on to Bangkok.
Links : http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8593-burma-wants-to-downsize-dawei-says-thai-daily.html
Thailand’s The Nation reported on Wednesday that Burma’s government has “caused Thailand concern” by proposing a significant reduction in the overall area of the Dawei Special Economic Zone from 204.5 sq km to 150 sq km.
Burmese President Thein Sein (right) discusses details with Thai Premier Yingluck Shinawatra as they travel to the Dawei Special Economic Zone. (PHOTO:Yingluck Shinawatra / Facebook) |
The news comes just a day after Burma’s President Thein Sein and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters in Dawei that both governments would back the multi-billion-dollar project and would actively seek investors.
The Nation went on to quote the Thai Transport Minister as saying: “This is the first meeting in which Myanmar's president clearly said he would invite a third country, likely Japan, to join in the investment. It is a benefit, as Japan has long-term funding sources for investment in infrastructure, including the port and roads.”
Thailand is committed to 35 percent of the US $9 billion-dollar industrial zone set to be located in Burma’s southern Tenasserim Division.
Due to begin in April, the Dawei project involves a deep-sea port, power plants and factories. The Thai investment also includes financing for a highway to run from Dawei on Burma’s Andaman coast across the Thai border to Kanchanaburi and on to Bangkok.
Links : http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/8593-burma-wants-to-downsize-dawei-says-thai-daily.html
How will the Dawei project benefit Myanmar?
By Stuart Deed | Monday, 05 November 2012
Keven Costner is a polarising actor – in between some sterling
performances in Dances With Wolves and A Perfect World, he found time to
act in some of the worst movies of the recent past, bottoming out with
widely derided Waterworld, a film so dreadful that even Dennis Hopper as
a mad pirate could not save it.
And at this point in time you
might legitimately be wondering if The Myanmar Times has been taken over
by crackheads: An opinion article in the business section about that
dashing rogue Kevin Costner – what’s that possibly got to do with
Myanmar?
The point lies in another Costner effort that deals with
his apparent desire to portray himself as a serious but
down-on-his-luck sportsman – and no, I’m not talking about the
preposterously awful Tin Cup, but the moderately watchable Field of
Dreams, released in 1989.
Now, I’m not going to lie and say I
remember the movie well but I do recall the line delivered by Costner’s
ghostly co-star: “If you build it, he will come.”
At this point
Costner’s character digs up part of his cornfield in a bid to encourage
the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson, a long-dead player idolised by
Costner’s father, to play baseball at the field.
And here’s where
I belatedly – and very crudely – arrive at my point: I think the mooted
US$50-billion Dawei Special Economic Zone and deepsea port in
Tanintharyi Region is Myanmar’s field of dreams, with Thailand and
possibly Japan acting as the ghostly voice.
Frankly, I don’t see
the benefit that Myanmar gets from Dawei but it seems clear from former
Thai prime minister Mr Abhisit Vejjajiva’s comments during a weekly
television address in late 2010 that Thailand knows what it wants from
the project.
“Some industries are not suitable to be located in
Thailand. This is why they decided to set up there,” he said, referring
to Dawei.
Tycoon U Zaw Zaw told Reuters news agency in early July
that his company, Max Myanmar Group of Companies, planned to reduce its
share in the 250-square-kilometre project from 25 percent.
“We are pulling out from the project gradually,” he confirmed to Reuters in a phone interview on July 4.
The
ambitious Dawei project was announced to the public in late 2010 but
has hit a number of roadblocks since then, including U Zaw Zaw’s planned
pullout, the axing of a planned 4000-megawatt coal-fired power plant on
environmental grounds and perhaps the greatest threat of all – the
failure of developer Italian-Thai to secure funding.
Somjet
Thinaphong, the managing director of the Dawei Development Co. Ltd, said
a gradual withdrawal by the Myanmar strategic partner is unlikely to
affect the project’s long-term viability, according to an article in the
Bangkok Post in early July.
“The viability of such a
capital-intensive development project is largely dependent on fund
sourcing,” he said. “The local company, or even Ital-Thai, does not have
the financial capacity to fund such a massive development project. We
have to bank on others to provide us with financial support.”
However, Japan and Thailand have since intervened to keep the project afloat.
“Italian-Thai
has had difficulty in mobilising the funding. So now the Thai
government has effectively taken over the project,” U Thaung Lwin,
chairman of the Dawei SEZ told Reuters in mid-September. “The next step
is to invite Japan”, which he said is committed to seeing the project
succeed.
Since the Thai and Myanmar governments agreed on July 23
to connect Dawei to the Thai port of Laem Chabang, 100 kilometres
southeast of Bangkok, Thai banks led by Bangkok Bank and Siam Commercial
Bank have arranged a 10 billion baht ($325 million) bridge loan to
sustain it for another 8-10 months, Mr Somjet Thinaphong told Reuters.
However,
I think the concerns over funding miss what I consider an important
point: There seems to be an expectation that if the site is built then
workers will arrive in droves to take up jobs.
“We need tons of
workers,” Premchai Karnasuta, the president of Italian-Thai Development,
told the New York Times in November 2010. “We will mobilise millions of
Burmese.”
But unless wages and working conditions on offer at the project are competitive, who is going to turn up for work?
There
seems to be an unspoken belief that Myanmar workers are going to stream
to the development from further north in Myanmar or from other jobs in
Thailand, but it just looks like a pipedream to me – and Kevin Costner
ain’t around for the happy ending.
There are just so many
question marks hanging over the project: Where are the workers going to
live? Is road and rail infrastructure linking the zone with the rest of
Myanmar going to be built?
Above all – how does this development benefit Myanmar and its 60 million people?
Instead,
the special economic zone planned for Thilawa in Yangon’s Thanlyin
township seems a much better bet: The workers, basic infrastructure,
services and companies are already there, and Japanese businesses and
the government are strongly backing the project, which means the funding
should not be a problem in the same way that it has been in Dawei.
For
its part, the Asian Development Bank has advised the Thai government to
invest in transport and infrastructure development in Myanmar to
encourage international investors and financiers, the Bangkok Post
reported on August 30.
Mr Craig Steffensen, the ADB’s Thailand
country director, said during the Thailand Focus 2012 meeting in Bangkok
on August 29 that the $8 billion required for the first phase of the
project had not been secured.
He added that the Thai government
should consider building more roads or rail links to augment the
motorway planned between Nonthaburi’s Bang Yai district and Kanchanaburi
province.
“It doesn’t need to be a massive investment, just an initial amount that can get the Dawei project off the ground,” he said.
Links : http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/opinion/2883-how-will-the-dawei-project-benefit-myanmar.html?start=1
Sunday, September 30, 2012
EIA on Dawei-Kanchanaburi road to be released
A bulldozer clearing the land of an oil farm in Dawei district (Photo - Phyo Zin)
An environmental impact assessment (EIA)
will come out by the year-end regarding a four-lane road, which is
under construction to link Myanmar’s Dawei deep-sea port and
Kanchanaburi in Thailand, coordinator Bo Bo Aung of Dawei Development
Association (DDA) said.
Some environmentalists believe that deforestation can increase as the road will pass through the Taninthayi mountain ranges.
The project is scheduled to be completed by 2015 and construction of the road axis has been finished.
Plans are also underway to expand the four-lane road into an eight-lane one.
“The environmental impact assessment on
the project is being carried out by the Thai side. I heard it will be
published at the end of this year. But we haven’t heard of the Myanmar
side making any assessment. It will be an eight-lane road project. The
axis for the four-lane road has been built. Now, deforestation in the
Taninthayi mountain ranges is increasing,” Bo Bo Aung said.
In 2008, Thailand and Myanmar signed a
memorandum of understanding to implement a US$80-billion project on
building an industrial zone and a deep-sea port in Dawei in southern
Myanmar.
The Thai government aims to use Dawei
deep-sea port as an exit to the Indian Ocean. It will also serve as a
link between Myanmar and Europe and Africa.
EIA on road linking Dawei port to be released
An environmental impact assessment (EIA) will come out by the year-end regarding a four-lane road, which is under construction to link Myanmar's Dawei deep-sea port and Kanchanaburi in Thailand, coordinator Bo Bo Aung of Dawei Development Association (DDA) said.
Some environmentalists believe that deforestation can increase as the road will pass through the Taninthayi mountain ranges.
The project is scheduled to be completed by 2015 and construction of the road axis has been finished.
Plans are also underway to expand the four-lane road into an eight-lane one.
"The environmental impact assessment on the project is being carried
out by the Thai side. I heard it will be published at the end of this
year. But we haven't heard of the Myanmar side making any assessment. It
will be an eight-lane road project. The axis for the four-lane road has
been built. Now, deforestation in the Taninthayi mountain ranges is
increasing," Bo Bo Aung said.
In 2008, Thailand and Myanmar signed a memorandum of understanding to
implement a US$80-billion project on building an industrial zone and a
deep-sea port in Dawei in southern Myanmar.
The Thai government aims to use Dawei deep-sea port as an exit to the
Indian Ocean. It will also serve as a link between Myanmar and Europe
and Africa.
Link : http://www.nationmultimedia.com/aec/EIA-on-road-linking-Dawei-port-to-be-released-30191111.html
Yingluck has Dawei chat at UN
Agrees with Myanmar president on urgency
- Published: 28/09/2012 at 07:48 AM
- Newspaper section: Business
NEW YORK CITY : Leaders of Thailand and Myanmar
have agreed to speed up the Dawei deep-sea port project in eastern
Myanmar, planning to announce their development plan in November through
the three-level mechanism.
The confirmation came after talks between Prime Minister Yingluck
Shinawatra and Myanmar President Thein Sein on the sidelines of the UN
General Assembly in New York.
Both sides agreed to move forward with the Dawei project, as Myanmar
would like to see the three-level mechanism continue its work through
meetings, said a source who asked not to be named.
Italian-Thai Development Plc, Thailand's biggest contractor, has been
granted a concession from the Myanmar government to develop the special
economic zone and deep-sea port in Dawei.
The three-level mechanism includes a joint high-level committee
chaired by Myanmar's deputy president and Thai Deputy Prime Minister and
Finance Minister, Kittiratt Na-Ranong.
The coordinating committee is headed by the Office of the National
Economic and Social Development Board, while six subcommittees on
infrastructure, industrial estates, energy, community development,
finance and rule of law are headed by related ministers in each country.
Thailand and Myanmar will announce the project development plan
during November's Asean Summit in Cambodia. The Thai government will
host the first meeting soon, said the source.
Other issues to be worked out during the meeting include Thailand's
interest in cooperating with Myanmar to develop a special economic zone
at Thilawa Port in Yangon, the source added.
Japan has formed a consortium with Myanmar to develop the area, and the Thai private sector would like to invest in the port.
The source mentioned Bangkok and Yangon will set up a working group
to join hands to develop the special economic zones. Details will be
discussed by the Thai industry minister, who will travel to Myanmar
soon.
In addition, Thailand will grant financial aid to Myanmar to build 76
kilometres of road from Tak's Mae Sot district on the Thai side to
Mywaddy-Kawkareik in Myanmar under the aegis of Thailand's Rural Roads
Department.
The Thai government will consider supporting road construction from
Kawkareik to Maylamyine, linking roads from Thailand to India through
Myanmar.
Addressing the Asia Society in New York, Ms Yingluck said Myanmar is proceeding towards democracy and has Thailand's support.
The prime minister said Myanmar needs support for projects that help improve the country's economic growth and quality of life.
She said the Thai government will also work closely with Myanmar to tackle refugee problems.
On the South China Sea issue, the premier said Thailand, as a
coordinator between Asean and China, would like to see the maritime
route safe for transport, with related agencies tackling the problem
through peaceful means.
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