Weekly Business Roundup (April 19, 2008)

Burma’s Trading Neighbors Offering Military Gifts

As both India and China step up their commercial links with Burma more evidence has emerged of their military backing for the junta.

While New Delhi desperately sought to gain a foothold in Burma’s gas and oil exploration and other infrastructure projects, India annually provided free weapons and ammunition to the regime, according to media sources.

Truckloads of equipment moved secretly across the border between Manipur State and Burma via Moreh, the main newspaper in the state capital Imphal, The Sangai Express, reported last week.

Citing military sources, the paper said annual military shipments worth millions of US dollars have been sent to Burma since 2003, with the largest transfer occurring this year.
 
“The Government of Manipur was never informed of the arms and ammunition transported through the State,” said the newspaper report.

The equipment, including artillery shells, bullets and guns was provided free as a trade sweetener, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, there are reports of increased shipments of Chinese made-military trucks into Burma from China’s Yunnan Province, via the Muse-Ruili border crossing.

The news agency Mizzima says it had received reports that dozens of new Chinese trucks capable of carrying troops or towing heavy armor were driven across the border in the past two weeks.

They are said to be part of a larger truck consignment which has been moving across the border since January.

The Indian report comes shortly after the Burmese junta Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye visited New Delhi to sign an agreement to let Indian companies spend US $120 million redeveloping Burma’s western port of Sittwe and upgrade connecting road and river links from the coast through to the Indian state of Mizoram.

India’s federal minister of commerce, Jairam Ramesh, was quoted by Mumbai’s Financial Express last week saying New Delhi had plans to open a string of cross-border trading points with Burma, linking with the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, as well Mizoram.

India’s northeastern states are plagued with rebel ethnic bands pursuing independence and harassing Indian attempts to develop the region.

Bangkok, New Delhi Vie for Junta Favors in Dawei Port

Overtures by the new Thai government for permission to develop a deep sea port at Dawei—on Burma’s narrow land strip adjoining the Andaman Sea—underlines the intensifying rivalry between Burma’s neighbors.

Dawei, also known as Tavoy, has been coveted by India for years as the possible site of a major trading port.

As far back as early 2005 reports surfaced that New Delhi was about to conduct feasibility studies on a plan to develop Dawei.

The objective was to create a sea trade link from southern India to Southeast Asia cutting out the Malacca Strait around Singapore at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.

That idea seems to have been sidelined and in the meantime changes in Indian foreign policy have placed more emphasis on opening up India’s restive landlocked northeast states.

Most recently, Burma gave approval to let Indian companies redevelop Burma’s dilapidated west coast port of Sittwe.

Sittwe is also a much cheaper option—US$ 120 million outlay instead of the hundreds of million a major deep sea port would have required.

This begs the question what does the Thai government have in mind for Dawei?

“Its geography puts it in line with Bangkok, and it’s less than 300 kilometers separating the two,” regional infrastructure and energy industries consultant-analyst Jeff Mead, based in Hong Kong, told The Irrawaddy.

“It could be very attractive for Thailand to ship in oil from the Middle East, via this route. And Thailand’s PTTEP has a major new gas development [the large M-9 block] in the nearby Gulf of Martaban.”

Illegal Burmese Labor Fuels Thailand Economy

The deaths of more than 50 Burmese migrants last week in a sealed container truck transporting them to illicit jobs in southern Thailand starkly illustrates the growing reliance Thailand places on unofficial labor to help run its economy.

The Thai authorities acknowledge that there may be 1 million Burmese migrant workers living in Thailand, yet Thailand’s Migrant Assistance Program recently recorded that only 367,834 were registered with work permits in 2007.

Various NGOs campaigning for the rights of abused minorities and refugees say the number of illegal Burmese in Thailand is closer to 1.5 million. Many of them are children.