Weekly Business Roundup (December 19, 2008)

By WILLIAM BOOT

India-Burma Telecommunications Upgrade Nears Completion

A multimillion dollar boost to telecommunications between northeast India and Burma will be completed by next March, according to media reports.

The cross-border optical fiber link now reportedly nearing completion is intended to improve telecommunications between Moreh on the India side and Burmese business communities through the Mandalay.

The fiber optic link is planned to add thousands of extra lines for telephone, fax and e-mail.

It’s being financed primarily by Telecommunications Consultants India Limited.

However, efforts to improve the safety and security of cross-border highway links between Burma and India’s unruly northeast region have again suffered setbacks with the virtual cessation of trade across the Moreh-Tamu border.

Truck companies hired to transport goods between Burma and the Indian Manipur state capital of Imphal are on strike over the fire-bombing of two vehicles on the Indian side earlier this month.

“The normal trade volume on either side of the border has come down so much so that people of the border area, particularly the small businessmen, are finding it hard to carry on,” said Imphal’s Sangai Express this week.

The main land border trade point between the two countries has been plagued by closures and blockades this year due to ethnic violence and extortion gangs operating on the Indian side.

India and Burma recently agreed to increase both the volume and range of goods moving in both directions via the Moreh-Tamu crossing.

Drilling in Disputed Offshore Waters Disappointing

Burma’s energy ministry has admitted that controversial drilling in waters contested by Bangladesh has so far failed to find commercial volumes of oil and gas.

However, despite Bangladesh objections more drilling is planned in the AD-7 Block in the Bay of Bengal, a ministry statement said.

The block is being explored by South Korea’s Daewoo International.

The discovery by the Bangladeshi navy of Daewoo’s activities sparked a naval confrontation between the two countries in November.

Daewoo reportedly withdrew from its drill rig site and the two countries held top level meetings to resume a years-long dispute over the disputed territory.

But Daewoo is still within a five-month, multimillion dollar drilling program in the disputed area.

Burma and Bangladesh have still not resolved the territorial dispute, even though both countries are supposed to make formal claims soon to the United Nations under the international law of the sea convention.

PTT Burma Pipeline ‘Safe’ from Cost Review

The global economic downturn has forced Thailand’s state oil and gas giant PTT to review plans to construct more gas pipelines—but the plan to eventually pump more gas from Burmese waters is unlikely to be affected.

PTT says it will review the US$1.4 billion worth of pipelines planned inside Thailand, in the south and the north, but it made no mention of the new pipeline planned to pump gas across an 80-kiloemter stretch of southeast Burma into Thailand.

The review covers 500 kilometers of pipelines, running from Ratchaburi to Prachuap Khiri Khan in Thailand's south, Saraburi to Nakhon Ratchasima in the northeast and Ayudhya to Nakhon Sawan in the center of the country.

The new Burma pipeline will move gas from PTT sister company PTTEP’s M-9 Block in the Gulf of Martaban, but probably not before 2011.

“The M-9 Block is too big and lucrative to both Thailand and Myanmar for even this current financial crisis to stop. You can be sure that pipeline plan is safe,” Bangkok-based energy industries consultant Collin Reynolds told The Irrawaddy.

Ban: Foreign Businesses Should Pressure Burmese Junta

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has reportedly urged foreign companies that operate in Burma to pressure the military junta to improve its record.

Ban was asked at a recent media conference in New York for his opinion on companies such as South Korea’s Daewoo that operate gas fields and pipelines in Burma to the benefit of the junta.

He said he could not comment on specific businesses but added that “whoever has influence” should make an effort to pressure the Burmese leadership, reports the U.S. human rights campaigning group Inner City Press (ICP).

ICP asked Ban about the responsibility of private corporations doing business in Myanmar, giving the specific example of Daewoo.

“I cannot comment on specifics,” Ban said, adding that "whoever has influence" should try to convince Myanmar to improve its record,” according to ICP’s Matthew Russell Lee.

ICP said Ban had earlier attended a New York forum on responsible management.
Daewoo was named recently in a complaint to the South Korean government by another U.S. rights group, Earth Rights International (ERI).

ERI accused Daewoo—which is the chief developer of Burma’s richest gas field off the coast of Arakan—of failing to abide by South Korea’s obligations of corporate responsibility under the terms of its membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.