By WIILIAM BOOT
India Seeks Greater Cross-border Trade with Junta
India stepped up its efforts this week to expand trade with Burma by dispatching a delegation led by senior government minister Jairam Ramesh, underlining the growing importance New Delhi attaches to improving economic—and political—ties with Burma’s military rulers.
Ramesh, who heads the commerce and energy ministries, will make a two-day visit, centered in Mandalay, and cover a range of issues focusing on expansion of cross-border trade.
The only official trade point between India and Burma along the entire 1,600 kilometer common border is at Moreh, just inside India’s Manipur State.
India wants to see two additional trading centers—adjoining Avangkhu in Nagaland State and Zowkhathar in Mizoram State, said The Hindu newspaper.
Ramesh is expected to seek an expansion of goods traded between the two countries.
The Moreh-Tamu crossing links with Imphal, the capital of Manipur State, which is on a corridor route receiving development aid from the Asian Development Bank. But the road link and the Moreh-Tamu border towns are repeatedly disrupted by ethnic violence and travel-fee extortion gangs.
Burma’s northeast states are unruly and some armed rebels who have been fighting for greater autonomy or even independence from India are also known to seek refuge across the wilder stretches of the Burmese border.
Ramesh’s visit tops an agreement recently for Indian companies to build two hydropower systems on the Chindwin River and before that there was a US $120 million deal for India to redevelop Burma’s old rice port of Sittwe on the Arakan coast.
The Kaladan River will also be improved to provide a transport access to the port from India’s Mizzima State.
India’s exports to Burma in the last financial year were only $185 million, while Indian imports of mostly agricultural produce totaled about $81 million.
Ramesh was also scheduled to open a computer technology training center in Rangoon, built with a $2 million Indian grant.
Tougher Tests in US to Keep Out Burmese Rubies
The United States is intensifying its monitoring of imported rubies, using high technology to ensure that the precious stone do not slip into the country from Burma.
Burmese mined rubies are prohibited in the U.S. under a new law which widens sanctions against the Burmese military regime.
The law gives new powers to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency to require verification that imported rubies were not originally mined in Burma.
In addition to strict documentation on origin, rubies coming into the country will be subject to random laboratory analysis, using technology which can help identity place of origin.
Until enactment of the Tom Lantos Block Burmese Jade Act, only about 1 percent of rubies imported into the U.S. were subject to laboratory analysis. But the analysis firm American Gemological Laboratories said in a statement this week that, “We expect the enforcement of this new law will have a significant influence on the manner in which rubies are documented for trading across our borders.”
The firm is one of three major laboratories engaged in gemstone analysis in the U.S. and which use spectrographic technology to check stones.
The U.S. has in the past been a significant market for Burmese rubies. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that Americans imported 3.68 million carats of rubies from all foreign sources in 2006, the latest year for records.
The Burmese government has increased the number of gemstones auctions per year in a bid to raise profits.
Nargis Puts Pressure on Arakan to Deliver More Export Fish
Burma’s Arakan State is being coerced by the military to produce and sell more fish, prawns and shrimps to neighboring countries.
Sales to Bangladesh and Thailand are expected to top US$40 million this year, says Narinjara, an Arakanese exile group in Bangladesh.
But despite an increase in production, export workers engaged in the industry have seen no benefit, says Narinjara.
“The government proclaimed that the maritime sector in Arakan State has been improving every year, but our standard of living has not changed, and we are just as poor as 50 years ago,” a fishery worker from Sittwe was quoted by Narinjara as saying.
Arakan has been urged to produce more this year because of damage to fisheries in the Irrawaddy delta caused by Cyclone Nargis.
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