Weekly Business Roundup (October 24, 2008)

By WILLIAM BOOT

India Bombing Halts Plans for Burma Cross-Border Trade

Only days after India and Burma agreed to open their common border to more trade and communications, New Delhi’s response to the deadly bombing in Imphal, the state capital of Manipur, is to call for the border’s sealing.

The two countries agreed last week to ease trade restrictions at the border crossing of Moreh-Tamu and “normalize” trade at at least one other point along their 1,600 kilometer border.

For years, there has been only one official trade entry between India and Burma along that border, at Moreh just inside India’s Manipur state.

India wants to see two additional trading centers along the border —adjoining Avangkhu in Nagaland state and Zowkhathar in Mizoram state,

India’s decision followed meetings in Mandalay of the India-Myanmar Joint Trade Committee, headed by India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Power Jairam Ramesh and Burma’s Minister for Commerce Brig Gen Tin Naing Thein.

The Imphal bombing on Tuesday, which killed 17, has been blamed on rebels fighting for a breakaway state from India.

New Delhi claims the People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak is based in remote jungle hideouts within Burma, from where it operates raids into India.

It is not clear what will happen to the plans for eased border trade in the wake of the bomb.

UN Envoy Silent on Cyclone Aid Scam

The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, has declined to comment on progress by the world body to recover losses of about US $10 million on Cyclone Nargis foreign aid caused by a junta-enforced currency exchange system.

Quitana was asked at a UN press conference for an update by the New York-based public funding accountability campaign group Inner City Press (ICP) this week.

“Quintana refused to comment on this,” ICP said. “Likewise when Inner City Press asked about reports of the government [making it a condition of] the distribution of UN aid on the recipients working on road projects for the military, Quintana said to ask elsewhere.”

The ICP, which first exposed the exchange rate scam, added: “So what does he, in fact, cover” in his UN role in Burma?

The UN admitted in late July that it was losing up to 25 percent of cyclone aid cash forcibly converted into Burmese kyat via Foreign Exchange Certificates with the junta-controlled Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank.

The loss of about $10 million through this conversion method was confirmed by UN official John Holmes when he subsequently visited Burma.

ICP’s UN representative Matthew Russell Lee said Quitana “went out of his way to offer praise” for the Burma regime.

Arakan Land Seized, Villagers Ordered to Work Free for Army

Burmese military authorities have seized 150 acres of land close to Arakan’s border with Bangladesh, reportedly to create cross-border trade zones.

The seizures followed a visit to the Taungbro Yar area by a group of high-ranking army officers, including Gen Khin Zaw of the Defense Ministry and Brig-Gen Tin Naing Thein from the Minister of Commerce.

The visit followed talks between top level officials from Burma and Bangladesh on closer commercial links.

Local businesspeople are meanwhile being offered small plots of the stolen land, together with a small warehouse, according to the exiled Arakanese group Narinjara.

“The business owners [were told] that the government has plans to construct many godowns in the trade zone and that these will also be sold to businesses to promote border trade with Bangladesh,” reported Narinjara.

Bangladesh has recently expressed interest in stepping up trade with Burma, buying land to grow crops in Arakan, and possibly building a small hydrodam to feed electricity back into energy starved Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, junta authorities have seized more than 350 acres of farmland from the Rohingya community in Rathedaung Township without reason, and then forced some of the plot holders to carry on working the land without payment.

Two hundred villagers were forced to work free in a rubber plantation near Aung Mamgala.

Tighter Kachin Border Restrictions Follow Battalion’s Replacement

Observers in Kachin State report that junta army personnel manning some border checkpoints with China have inexplicably begun blocking the import of many Chinese goods.

Until recently virtually anything could move between the two countries simply by paying a “fee” to soldiers on the Burma side of crossing points, especially at Loije.

“The only goods that are [now] allowed to pass through the gates are items on which there is a trade agreement between the two countries,” one businessman told the NGO Kachin New Group.

The restriction has apparently been introduced since the replacement of Infantry Battalion No. 74 by Light Infantry Battalion No. 348.