Economists Criticize Tripartite Core Group

By WILLIAM BOOT

BANGKOK — The pace of reconstruction in Cyclone Nargis-damaged areas of Burma is so slow that it would take almost 100 years to replace all the lost homes, says a sharply critical Australian study of post-disaster management.

“State repairs to irrigation have been similarly glacial,” says the study, adding that almost one year after the cyclone “a mere 0.06 percent of irrigation channels and dykes in affected areas” has been repaired.

Irrigation of the sea-flooded Irrawaddy delta is a key element in rebuilding the major rice-growing region.

The withering assessment of post-Nargis reconstruction, using internationally donated funds overseen by the United Nations and the Southeast Association of Asian Nations (Asean), was made by a team of Burma economy experts based at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

The study says virtually all reconstruction is dominated by the military government in a “top down” role that excludes the private sector and is condoned by the Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan, known as PONREPP.

This plan was drawn up by the Tripartite Core Group (TCG)—representing the UN, Asean and the Burmese military government.

The TCG was created to appease the Burmese regime which refused to allow direct foreign aid and expert disaster-management teams and the private sector into the Irrawaddy delta where as many as 140,000 people died and millions more were affected in the devastating cyclone of May last year.

The assessment by the Australian team—which produces a regular Burma Economic Watch bulletin—described PONREPP as “deeply disappointing.”

A PONREPP report was published in February as an update on reconstruction efforts 10 months after the cyclone.

“It is a throwback to the top-down, state-driven, planning mindset that in the 1950s and 60s condemned countless developing countries to stagnation and retreat,” said Burma Economic Watch, which is led by Sean Turnell, a professor of economics.

“The private sector is notable largely by its absence—this primary driver of economic development subsumed by local authorities of dubious standing, the ministrations of local and international NGOs and, above all, by the state and its agencies. In short, the recommendations set out in PONREPP would condemn Burma, in the view of [Burma Economic Watch], to a continuation of the policies and programs that have impoverished this once prosperous and hopeful country.”

PONREPP is also strongly criticized by the Australian study team of condoning calls for an additional US $690 million of recovery funds from the international community.

“Nowhere does PONREPP justify why such funds are sought offshore and in foreign currency, nor why the substantial foreign reserves Burma has accumulated in recent times—an estimated $US 3-4 billion—are exempted from being deployed in reconstruction.

“It is surely not unreasonable for taxpayers in donor countries to question why they are being asked to pay to safeguard the nest-egg set aside by Burma’s military leaders.”

The Macquarie University report says PONREPP proposes the creation of a “vast pyramidal structure of agencies” meant to ensure coordination of aid, transparency and accountability.

But, says the Australian team, “The complexity of the task that PONREPP assigns its planning bureaucracy would strain the most sophisticated administrative structures anywhere, much less that which, in this case, is cobbled together from the poorly paid and under-resourced staff of Burma’s military state and agencies, and a similar scattering of aid workers.”

The corruption-monitoring organization Transparency International lists Burma as the second-most corrupt country in the world, marginally better than last-placed Somalia, and marginally worse than Iraq.

The Australian assessment coincides with another outside study which has called for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into alleged human rights abuses by the Burmese military government in the wake of Nargis.

“The people of the delta told us how the Burmese military regime hindered cyclone relief efforts, confiscated aid supplies and land, and used forced labor, including forced child labor, in its reconstruction efforts,” says the study by the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the U.S.