India firms Myanmar ties during PM visit
By Hla Hla Htay | AFP – Mon, May 28, 2012

India agreed a raft of deals with Myanmar on Monday during a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh aimed at boosting trade and energy links and contesting the influence of regional rival China.

The first Indian premier to visit in a quarter of a century, Singh met President Thein Sein in the capital Naypyidaw as energy-hungry New Delhi woos Myanmar after dramatic reforms ended its international isolation.

The neighbours signed 12 agreements covering an array of issues including security, development of border areas, trade and transport links.

Talks were described as “warm, cordial and constructive” in a joint statement released after the meeting, which stressed the potential for closer future ties.

“Alluding to the mutually agreed target of doubling the bilateral trade by 2015, both leaders emphasised that there is considerable untapped potential for greater trade and urged the business community to capitalise on this potential,” it said.

Indian trade with Myanmar stood at $1.2 billion in 2010, far short of the $4.4 billion between China and Myanmar.

Singh is the latest in a series of top-level visitors to Myanmar as the international community begins easing sanctions, raising hopes that the impoverished nation could be the next big frontier market.

He is seen as looking to expand India’s influence after half a century of military rule left Myanmar heavily reliant on Chinese investment and political support.

The Indian premier will on Tuesday hold talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the main city of Yangon, in a move seen as a sign that India also wants to repair links with the veteran activist.

New Delhi was once a staunch supporter of the democracy icon, but changed tack in the mid-1990s as it sought closer ties with Myanmar, and drew international criticism for its engagement with the former junta.

India has since pointed to recent dramatic reforms under a new quasi-civilian regime, including Suu Kyi’s election to parliament in April by-elections, as a validation of its stance.

Singh “commended the on-going efforts at political, economic and social reform”, according to the statement.

Renaud Egreteau, of the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, said India was “realigning” its policy on Myanmar in an attempt to become its neighbour’s trading partner of choice.

“India is trying not to miss the bus in Myanmar as it opens to the world,” he told AFP.

But he said the “obstacles are always the same for India”, including delays to its infrastructure projects and a lack of political confidence between the two countries.

Singh is travelling with a top-level business delegation and the joint statement said Indian firms would be “specifically encouraged” to invest in oil and gas, infrastructure, tourism, and information and communication technology.

Indian-backed infrastructure projects in the country include a port at Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal, but New Delhi’s presence lags well behind that of Beijing, which is behind a host of major energy developments.

According to data from IHS Global Insight, China led the ranking in investments in Myanmar last year, pledging $8.3 billion, with India trailing in 13th place, with $189 million pledged.

China insisted that it “likes to see” relations develop between Myanmar and India, state media reported. Ties between Beijing and New Delhi have not always been smooth, especially where border disputes are concerned.

Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS, said Myanmar was in the grip of a “gold rush”, and that oil and gas were an area of “considerable opportunity” for investors.

India sees Myanmar as the springboard to a closer connection with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as a key partner in counter-insurgency and economic development drives in its northeast border areas.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was administered as a province of India during British colonial rule and the two countries have religious links dating back to the early spread of Buddhism more than 2,000 years ago.

Myanmar’s health system on life support
By Lucile Andre | AFP – Sun, May 27, 2012

Starved of funds and medicine during decades of military rule, doctors at a clinic in Yangon offer their usual advice to one of Myanmar’s newest HIV patients — come back when you’re sicker.

In a country with one of Southeast Asia’s biggest armies but a healthcare system in tatters, scarce antiretroviral drugs are given only to those with the advanced form of the illness.

“If I don’t get the treatment, I’m worried the disease will get worse,” a 47-year-old farmer told AFP at the clinic run by charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) after she was diagnosed with the virus.

During almost half a century of military rule which officially ended last year, Myanmar’s junta generously funnelled cash to the armed forces but presided over one of the world’s lowest outlays on public health.

Non-governmental organisations and patients using their own money have scrambled to plug the gap, but with limited success given the scale of demand from the estimated 60 million population.

“Patients are upset, it is difficult to tell them… but we cannot refer them anywhere, the government doesn’t have it (medicine) either,” said Soe Yadanar, one of four doctors at the clinic in a poor Yangon neighbourhood, which has more than 2,000 registered patients.

“We tell them they can come back later. But they know the situation in Myanmar,” she added.

MSF says only a third of the 120,000 people living with HIV in Myanmar who under World Health Organization (WHO) standards should receive antiretrovirals are being treated.

The shortage of medicine extends to other serious illnesses including tuberculosis and malaria.

The country has a relatively high number of doctors but lacks medicines and wider support systems to treat patients, said MSF head of mission Peter Paul de Groote.

“There are quite a lot of trained doctors but you can have many doctors — if you don’t have the drugs, the paramedicals, the nurses, you still don’t get anywhere,” he explains.

And while the state press frequently burnishes the government’s image as a provider for its people, with pictures of brand-new hospitals, the reality is markedly different.

“I visited a lot of township level hospitals and I’m always struck by the fact that there are a lot of staff but very few patients,” says Mike Toole, a public health expert and adviser to the 3MDG Fund, a consortium of international donors to Myanmar.

“Patients just don’t go there because they don’t get good quality services, there is a lack of equipment, a lack of basic medical supplies, of drugs.”

Figures from the WHO show Myanmar spent just $12 per capita (or two percent of GDP) on health in 2009, of which only one dollar came from the government, with the remainder cobbled together by NGOs and patients.

That miserly outlay was matched only by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a nation ravaged by war and political instability.

In an effort to address the funding crisis, reformist President Thein Sein, whose nominally-civilian government took over from the junta in March 2011, has quadrupled the health budget for 2012-2013.

“It is a good start, but it is coming from a very low base,” says Toole. “It will need massive investment… with comparable investment by the government and donors, it would probably take at least 20 years, and possibly 30, to catch up with Thailand.”

Donor nations are being urged to take advantage of Myanmar’s reforms, and some eased sanctions, to inject cash into its ailing public health services.

But there are fears the reverberations of the global economic crisis may mean donors are reluctant to reach for their wallets.

Whatever the amount offered, NGOs want Myanmar to completely rethink its health system.

Under the junta NGOs were banned from public hospitals and in effect ran a parallel health service, but now they are calling for closer cooperation with the government to extend the reach of healthcare.

“We need to start thinking about a long-term health system where we can all work together,” argues de Groote.

In the meantime, many among Myanmar’s impoverished population will continue to rely on foreign NGOs for help.

Mying Maung Maung, a 37-year-old carpenter, says he had to turn to MSF when he needed treatment for tuberculosis and HIV.

After several years of antiretroviral treatment, the father-of-four stopped responding to the medicine, in part because he did not stick to the strict timetable of taking his dose.

“I don’t have a watch, I had to find clocks… but they always have a different time,” he said.

Suu Kyi, in Myanmar since 1988, starts world tour
Aung San Suu Kyi makes first trip out of Myanmar in 24 years, starting with visit to Thailand
By Jocelyn Gecker, Associated Press | Associated Press – 1 hour 52 minutes ago

BANGKOK (AP) — For 24 years, Aung San Suu Kyi was either under house arrest or too fearful that if she left Myanmar, the government would never let her return.

Now, in a sign of how much life there has changed, she’s back to being a world traveler, catching an 85-minute flight to neighboring Thailand on Tuesday night.

With the installation of an elected government last year, and her party’s own entrance into parliament this year, she can claim at least partial success for her long fight and feel a freedom to explore the world.

Suu Kyi is to spend several days in Thailand, meeting with poor migrant workers and war refugees from her homeland, as well as international movers and shakers at the the World Economic Forum on East Asia.

She’ll return to Myanmar briefly and head to Europe in mid-June, with stops including Geneva and Oslo — to formally accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won 21 years ago.

In Dublin, she’ll share a stage with U2 frontman Bono, a staunch Suu Kyi supporter, at a concert in her honor, according to Irish media. In England, she has been given the rare honor of addressing both houses of Parliament. France’s Foreign Ministry says she also plans to stop in Paris.

The tour marks Suu Kyi’s latest step in a stunning trajectory from housewife to political prisoner to opposition leader in Parliament, as Myanmar opens to the outside world and sheds a half century of military rule. Meetings with world leaders are planned along the way as dignitaries line up to shake Suu Kyi’s hand.

The last time the 66-year-old Nobel laureate flew abroad was a year before the Berlin Wall came down, in April 1988, when she traveled from London to Myanmar to nurse her dying mother.

Until then she had led an international lifestyle, growing up partly in India, where her mother was ambassador. She later attended Oxford, worked for the United Nations in New York and Bhutan and then married British academic Michael Aris and raised their two sons in England.

Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar just as an uprising erupted against the military regime. As daughter of Gen. Aung San, the country’s independence hero, she was thrust into the forefront of demonstrations until the military brutally crushed the protests and locked her under house arrest in 1989.

Over the next two decades she became the world’s most famous political prisoner. During intermittent periods of freedom, she declined opportunities to go abroad for fear she would not be allowed to re-enter Myanmar.

Suu Kyi’s commitment to the cause came at high personal cost. In 1999, she stayed in Myanmar even as her husband was dying of cancer in England. They last saw each other in 1995, after which the junta denied Aris a visa.

After her release from house arrest in November 2010, Suu Kyi had an emotional reunion with her younger son, Kim Aris, when the junta gave him a visa after a decade-long separation.

The English leg of Suu Kyi’s trip is bound to include some family time. She will celebrate her 67th birthday on June 19 while in England, where Kim lives.

Suu Kyi’s aides have offered few details about her trip aside from the destinations, saying only that she will pack medicine for motion sickness.

“She gets airsick and seasick very easily. She will have to take her pills to prevent airsickness,” said Win Htein, a senior official from her National League for Democracy party. He said she was typically stoic ahead of her travels: “She doesn’t look too excited about it.”

Thailand was not part of the original itinerary but Suu Kyi decided last week to attend the economic forum. She has a Friday speaking slot that is bound to be the event’s main attraction.

Suu Kyi’s appearance at the conference had threatened to upstage that of Myanmar President Thein Sein, but he canceled over the weekend citing “urgent matters” at home, said Thai Foreign Ministry
spokesman Thani Thongphakdi. He rescheduled his first official visit to Thailand for next week.

Thein Sein took power last year from the military junta following elections that were deemed unfair by international observers. Since then he has surprised much of the world by engineering sweeping reforms, though military leaders still have great control over the country.

Since Suu Kyi’s release, many international dignitaries have visited her in Myanmar, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in December and British Prime Minister David Cameron in April. Cameron suggested she visit her “beloved Oxford” in June.

Suu Kyi replied at the time: “Two years ago I would have said ‘Thank you for the invitation, but sorry.’ But now I am able to say ‘Perhaps,’ and that’s great progress.”

Curtains open wide in Myanmar, a crack in N. Korea
2 reclusive nations pull back their political curtains, but change? That’s more complicated
By Tim Sullivan, Associated Press | Associated Press – 1 hour 7 minutes ago

For decades, they have been two of the world’s most reclusive nations.

Myanmar, run by a cabal of generals, squelched any attempt at democratic change and kept the country’s most popular figure under strict house arrest for years.

North Korea, run by the same family as a Stalinist dictatorship since the 1940s, simply sealed itself off. Outsiders were rarely allowed to visit, tourists were long unknown and the only way ordinary people could escape the country’s extreme poverty and political repression was to steal across the border into China.

But in very different ways, the two nations have opened themselves up over the past year or so, allowing the world to peer behind the political curtains they had so laboriously erected.

Both now have foreign journalists arriving in unprecedented numbers (though the visits are tightly restricted in North Korea). Both have had observers predicting momentous changes. Both governments have insisted — repeatedly — that they are working to improve the lives of their citizens.

But how much change has there been? That’s more complicated.

The question is debated relentlessly in Myanmar, asked by everyone from wealthy businessmen with military connections to pro-democracy political activists. Though skeptics abound, “hope” has become the country’s political watchword.

But for observers of North Korea, the answer is far more definitive, and far less optimistic.

“None,” said Andrei Lankov, a scholar on the North at Seoul’s Kookmin University, when asked if he had seen signs of significant change since the December death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il, and the rise to power of his young son. In his opinion: “The young dictator is still controlled and surrounded by the old guard, the same people who for many years formulated and executed his father’s polices, so it is too early to expect any noticeable change.”

Less than two years ago, though, similar talk was common in Yangon, Myanmar’s capital, when a November 2010 national election was widely dismissed as a political sham stage-managed by the generals. Only in recent months has that pessimism begun to lift.

“We are now seeing some changes we didn’t expect,” said Yin Sein, a 59-year old high school teacher in Yangon.

First, hundreds of political prisoners were freed — more than 650 in the past year. Then, in April, the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in historic by-elections. Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner who had spent more than 15 years under house arrest, now sits in Parliament.

Today, little feels repressive about Myanmar. Unlike Pyongyang, a funereal town which basically shuts down at nightfall, Yangon has long been a city of neighborhood bars, sprawling markets and storefront restaurants with plastic tables on the sidewalk.

Now, with the end of military rule, even protests have come into the open, as people test their newfound freedoms.

Every night this past week, 100 people or so have gathered at the Sule Pagoda, a major Buddhist shrine in central Yangon, to vent their anger about the rolling electrical blackouts that plague the city. Hundreds more people come simply to watch.

Two years ago, such a protest almost certainly would have been met with tear gas, baton-wielding policemen and trips to jail. Today, the police watch calmly from a distance, and after a few hours they politely ask everyone to leave.

But things are seldom clear in Myanmar, once known as Burma. The generals, some of whom grew immensely rich during decades of military rule, still wield great power over Myanmar’s politics. Old laws remain in place that would enable them — if they felt threatened, or believed democratization was moving too quickly — to once again seize complete power.

Myanmar has become a country of political contradictions, a place where local officials no longer stage middle-of-the-night checks to look for unregistered visitors in private homes, but where many people register their guests with the authorities anyway. The laws requiring registration, after all, are still on the books.

It’s a country where restrictions have been lifted on long-oppressed political parties, but where many people are still too afraid to talk about politics on the telephone.

“We are not sure what is underneath this veneer of change and how sustainable these changes are,” Yin Sein said.

Even Suu Kyi warns against the dangers of undue optimism.

“We are at a point in history when there is a possibility for transition, but I do not think we can take it for granted that this transition will come about,” she told reporters recently.

“I sometimes feel that people are too optimistic about the scene in Burma,” she told a conference in Washington D.C., speaking on a video link.

But if the people of Myanmar have learned the art of pessimism through decades of military rule, the people of North Korea have learned they shouldn’t even contemplate change — at least not publicly.

North Koreans have spent years in prison for questioning the legitimacy of the Kim family: Founding ruler Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and now his grandson Kim Jong Un. If many observers and foreign governments had hoped that Kim Jong Il’s death would pave the way for political reform, there has been little sign of change.

“If such change is to happen (and this is a big if), it will take place only after Kim Jong Un’s people assume … some independent power — that is, in a couple of years at the fastest,” Lankov said in an email.
In many ways, North Korea can appear frozen in time, with one family in power for more than 60 years, and its dreary, poverty-battered cities decorated with Soviet-style propaganda posters.

So any change can seem momentous, from the dozens of journalists allowed into North Korea in April to cover the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, to the growth of its tourism industry. Some observers saw sparks of change when North Korea publicly admitted the April failure of a rocket launch it said was intended to carry a satellite into space (though much of the world insists the launch was cover for testing long-range missile technology). In January, The Associated Press opened its newest bureau in Pyongyang.

The vast majority of those outsiders, though, normally glimpse only the lives of everyday North Koreans through the windows of their tour buses. For the most part, they see only what the Pyongyang government wants them to see, whether massive rallies in support of Kim Jong Un or huge monuments that glorify his father and grandfather.

In Myanmar, journalists now travel easily across much of the country, talking to anyone from top officials to poor farmers to opposition leaders. Not so in North Korea. Visitors rarely see the cities that have almost no electricity, or the homes of people struggling with immense poverty. They rarely leave Pyongyang — North Korea’s showcase capital — and certainly meet no political prisoners.

And while some people in Myanmar are afraid to talk politics on the telephone, few people in North Korea even have access to international phone lines.

But if there have been few signs of internal change in North Korea, there are signs that people there can now increasingly see the outside world.

While North Korea’s government-controlled media allow little but praise for the Kim family, the spread of technology — from inexpensive DVD players to cheap, handheld radios — means there are now many ways for North Koreans to get around their government’s media roadblocks.

Most North Koreans have no access to the Internet, but they can increasingly buy DVDs smuggled in from China. Those DVDs show everything from South Korean soap operas to recordings of foreign news broadcasts.

“In 2012, North Koreans can get more outside information, through more types of media, from more sources, than ever before,” according to a recent report commissioned by the U.S. State Department and conducted by a consulting group, InterMedia. “Despite the incredibly low starting point, important changes in the information environment in North Korean society are under way.”

India inks pacts with Myanmar during Singh’s visit
Associated Press – Mon, May 28, 2012

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — India agreed Monday to provide Myanmar with a $500 million credit as one of 12 deals signed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the Southeast Asian country.

Singh is on a three-day visit that underscores India’s quest for energy supplies and concerns about China’s strong influence in Myanmar.

He met with Myanmar’s reformist President Thein Sein, and together they attended the signings for the credit line between the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Export and Import Bank of India, an air services pact and other agreements.

Singh’s visit is the first in 25 years by an Indian prime minister, even though the two countries share a 1,600-kilometer (1,000-mile) land border, as well as a maritime border in the Bay of Bengal. Then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Myanmar in 1987.

The current trip follows high-level visits to India by Thein Sein in October and reciprocal visits by the foreign ministers of the two countries.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, India was a strong supporter of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in her fight against Myanmar’s military. Singh will meet Tuesday with Suu Kyi, now the parliamentary opposition leader.

But in the mid-’90s, India changed tack to engage with the country’s military junta, resisting pressure from the Western democracies that had imposed economic sanctions on Myanmar.

New Delhi insisted it had to follow a pragmatic policy because it needed its neighbor’s help to crack down on Indian rebels who had built hideouts in the jungles along the India-Myanmar border.

India is also wary of China’s major influence in Myanmar, and is in competition with its large regional rival for access to the country’s large natural gas resources.

India remains “committed to a close, cooperative and mutually beneficial partnership with the government and people of Myanmar,” Singh said in a statement before leaving New Delhi on Sunday.

The installation last year of Thein Sein as a military-backed but elected president and his initiation of democratic reforms opened up new prospects.

The field became more level for foreign traders and investors, but also more competitive as Western nations eased economic sanctions imposed during the previous military regime.

Indian automotive giant Tata Motors announced Monday that it has entered into an agreement with Myanmar’s Apex Greatest Industrial Co Ltd. for the distribution of Tata’s commercial vehicles and passenger cars in Myanmar.

It already has constructed a heavy truck assembly plant for a Myanmar state enterprise that was inaugurated in December 2010.

Bilateral trade between India and Myanmar was around $1.2 billion in 2011. Both sides hope to push trade to $3 billion by 2015.

Businessmen to Be Granted Myanmar Visas on Arrival
YANGON, Myanmar May 28, 2012 (AP)

Businessmen and conference attendees will be granted visas on arrival in Myanmar from Friday.

Immigration Department Director-General Maung Maung Than said the visas will cost $50 but not be available for tourists. He said the visas will be available to nationals of 27 countries including the U.K. and the U.S.

Myanmar introduced visas-on-arrival in 2010 but suspended the service before that year’s general election.

The service will first be available at the country’s main entry point, Yangon International Airport, and later in Mandalay and the capital, Naypyitaw.

Maung Maung Than also said a blacklist was updated to bar those who violated visa agreements, criminals and people banned by other government ministries. Critics of military rule often were banned.

PM seeks to heal bad blood on Myanmar visit
Reuters – Sun, May 27, 2012 10:32 AM EDT
By Andrew R.C. Marshall

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) – In northwest Myanmar, where the Kaladan River flows out into the Bay of Bengal, the two giant arms of a half-built wharf enfold the estuarine mud with steel and concrete.

Their embrace is fraternal – Myanmar’s giant neighbour India is funding the new port in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State – but also strategic.

The port is part of a $214-million river and road network that will carve a trade route into India’s landlocked northeast and underscore New Delhi’s determination to capitalise on Myanmar’s growing importance at Asia’s crossroads.

Manmohan Singh will seek to bolster ties this week during the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Myanmar in 25 years. His official agenda includes road, rail, waterways and air links, says India’s foreign ministry.

Unofficially, he must also overcome a history of bad blood with Myanmar, where Indian investments are already dwarfed by regional rival China.

The visit follows a year of dramatic reforms in which Myanmar has pulled back from China’s powerful economic and political orbit and won a suspension of U.S. and European sanctions. With change has come a series of high profile visits, including stops by the leaders of Britain and South Korea, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

President Thein Sein’s government has held peace talks with ethnic minority rebels, relaxed strict media censorship, allowed trade unions and protests and held a by-election dominated by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party.

As Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation, trade with its neighbour is already swelling. Myanmar’s government expects two-way trade with India to nearly double in two years to $2 billion, from $1.4 billion in the year to March 30, a figure that was nearly 30 percent higher from the previous year, according to Myanmar’s Ministry of Commerce.

“Stronger trade and investment links, development of border areas, improving connectivity between our two countries and building capacity and human resources are areas that I hope to focus on during my visit,” Singh said in a statement released before his arrival in the capital Naypyitaw on Sunday evening.

India should be a natural partner, with ties stretching back to the ancient Buddhist emperor Ashoka and, more recently, a shared experience of British colonialism and World War Two.

But its business interests in the former Burma have been “few and far between” since the mass expulsion of Indian merchants after the military seized power in 1962, says Thant Myint-U, author of “Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia”.

“Many in India remember all too well that this was the country that nationalised Indian businesses and expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Indians with literally nothing more than the shirts on their backs,” he said.

One hopeful symbol of improved ties is Sittwe.

The two countries formally agreed on the so-called Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project in April 2008, just seven months after Myanmar’s military junta crushed nationwide pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

Work began on Sittwe port in September 2010, shortly before the former military junta held a rigged election that brought to power a quasi-civilian but surprisingly reformist government.

Indian conglomerate Essar Group is building the port on 70,000 square metres (753,000 sq ft) of landfill in Sittwe’s centre. It should be ready in two years, says Myanmar’s Commerce Ministry, accommodating ships from the Indian city of Kolkata, a 539-km (334 mile) voyage away across the Bay of Bengal, and handling up to 500,000 tonnes a year.

From Sittwe, ships will sail up the Kaladan River to the town of Paletwa, where Essar will build a second, smaller port. A 122-km (76-mile) highway will connect Paletwa to the Indian state of Mizoram. The two ports and dredge work will cost $74 million. The highway will cost $140 million.

STRATEGIC SIGNIFICANCE

India is already Myanmar’s third-biggest export market after Thailand and China. But Thant Myint-U plays down Myanmar’s economic importance to India. “Myanmar is extremely important for India’s northeast, but because the northeast itself rarely gets Delhi’s attention, that in itself doesn’t count for much.”

However, New Delhi is acutely aware of Myanmar’s strategic significance “because of China’s increasing economic presence and anxiety about a possible future Chinese presence on the Bay of Bengal”, he says.

Not far south of Sittwe, Chinese money is funding a bigger port and special economic zone in Kyaukphyu, a coastal town where Myanmar-China pipelines reach the Bay of Bengal, creating a passage from western China to South and Southeast Asia and allowing shipments of fuel and natural resources to avoid the Malacca Strait.

An Essar company official said “communication problems” had been a headache during the project, with Myanmar officials slow to provide information and language issues also a hurdle. The company, however, would consider further projects in the country, given they had already worked there.

“Business is all about relationships, and we have been meeting the right people,” the official said.

A delegation of Indian business officials will join the prime minister on his visit, said an Indian Foreign Ministry official, adding that India was looking at setting up a special economic zone.

Indian companies are showing interest too.

Tata Motors (TAMO.NS), which makes the ultra-cheap Nano and owns Jaguar Land Rover, is looking to expand operations in Myanmar by assembling and selling buses and light commercial vehicles there, its India head said in January. Tata already operates a truck assembly plant in Myanmar.

State-run explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC.NS), which has two gas blocks in Myanmar with production due to start in 2013, and tractor maker Escorts Ltd (ESCO.NS) have also said they are looking to expand operations there.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was once lionised by New Delhi, which gave her the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1993 and Myanmar’s dictatorship the cold shoulder. Singh will meet Suu Kyi in the biggest city Yangon on Tuesday.

But with growing investment in Myanmar by regional rival China, the world’s biggest democracy has forged closer ties, inviting former dictator Senior General Than Shwe on an official state visit to India in 2004.

Three years later, after he presided over a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks, India was widely criticised for its muted response amid international outrage.

“Manmohan Singh has to do more than offer ports, bridges and roads, as the Chinese do,” says Thant Myint-U. “Instead, he has to … delve deeply into the very long history of cultural ties between the two countries and come up with a new vision for Indo-Burmese relations.

“The problem is that no one in Burma thinks of India when they think of the future.”

Still, Myanmar expects to benefit from the Sittwe project, partly from jobs. Essar employs 600 local people on the Sittwe site, although it brought in most of its skilled workers and specialist construction equipment from India.

“This project is good for the northeast part of India and for Myanmar,” Myanmar Industry Minister Soe Thein said in an interview with Reuters in Naypyitaw. “We can’t do it ourselves due to the lack of budget and problems in our financial sector.”

Bangkok Post – Suu Kyi arrives in Thailand
Published: 29/05/2012 at 10:43 PM
Online news:

Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Thailand late Tuesday on her first overseas trip from Myanmar in more than two decades, an AFP reporter said.

Suu Kyi, who last left the former army-ruled nation in 1988, landed in the Thai capital around 10:00 pm (1500 GMT) after the short flight from Yangon.

She is expected to meet the Thai prime minister during her stay in Bangkok and attend the World Economic Forum on East Asia and meet Myanmar migrant communities during several days in the country.

Speaking to AFP just before her departure Suu Kyi said she “didn’t feel anything special” about the landmark foreign trip.

“It’s a part of my job. I’m going to stay for four or five days… I will visit one refugee camp,” she added, without providing further details.

The democracy icon, who spent 15 of the past 22 years under house arrest, will emerge into a world transformed _ the skyscrapers and frenetic activity of Bangkok presenting a stark contrast to her home city of Yangon.

Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has embraced an increasingly global role as Myanmar sheds its pariah status under a quasi-civilian government, meeting world dignitaries in Yangon and accepting overseas invites.

Foreign travel will give her greater access to a global community eager to see her in person and allow her to meet ordinary people as well as world leaders.

Fearful that she would never be allowed to return, Suu Kyi refused to travel abroad in the past, even when the former junta denied her dying husband a visa to visit her from Britain.

5/29/2012 @ 4:14AM
Forbes – Myanmar (Burma) Property Stock Soars In Singapore

The dramatic political thaw in Myanmar (Burma) over the last year or so has begun to transform the country’s image after decades of military-run isolation. Western powers have responded by scaling back or axing sanctions on trade and investment, raising expectations of an economic takeoff, once aid begins to flow and market reforms take hold (a new investment law is a potential catalyst). Myanmar is a poor country, but the one percent is extremely rich. Long before the political thaw under President Thein Sein, a former general, land prices in the main city of Yangon had been rising rapidly.

Ordinary investors who want a piece of the action in Myanmar have had few good options, given the paucity of capital markets and reputable direct investments. One listed company that does have heavy exposure to Myanmar is Yoma Strategic Holdings, a Singapore-listed firm controlled by Serge Pun, a Myanmar-born entrepreneur. Pun recently injected a mixed-use property project into Yoma, and the stock has begun to climb on expectations of rising property values in Myanmar. Yoma stock is up nearly 80% since the start of the year, compared to near-zero growth in most Asian markets. Its profit doubled to $4.7 million in the year to Mar. 31.

Exposure to Myanmar cuts both ways; a political setback could cool investors’ passion for Yoma’s property story. Expect a spike in coverage this week when Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, makes a rare overseas trip to Bangkok, where she is due to speak at the World Economic Forum. She hasn’t left Myanmar since 1988, when the nation erupted against a socialist junta. Times have changed, and so, finally, has Myanmar.

The Telegraph(India) – High-stakes plunge into Myanmar
By Ashis Chakrabarti | www.telegraphindia.com – Mon 28 May, 2012

Naypyitaw, May 27: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived here this evening ‘ in the footsteps of other world leaders ‘ hoping to make India a new player in dramatic changes unfolding in Myanmar.

Myanmar is where India meets China, geographically and otherwise. What Singh initiates during this trip could be the first step for opening up a new Silk Road, connecting the two countries with the rest of the region. It could also be the start, some have warned, of a new Great Game between the world’s largest rising powers.

Indian officials, however, insist that the country has no “expansionist” interests in forging a new relationship with Myanmar. No prizes for guessing which country is mentioned under the breath as having such interests in Myanmar.

Two things make Singh’s visit significant ‘ he is the first Indian Prime Minister to come to this long-isolated country in 25 years and he comes here to fill an Indian void that was fully exploited by China for several decades.

There have been some preparations, though, for Singh’s visit over the past few years as India built bridges with Myanmar’s military rulers. His visit is believed to be the result of the success of the earlier initiatives and of Myanmar’s first tentative steps towards democracy and towards opening up the country to the outside world. The team of CEOs of big Indian companies accompanying the Prime Minister underscores New Delhi’s expectations from Singh’s visit.

The Prime Minister himself gave an indication of the importance of his visit here. Prior to leaving New Delhi for the Myanmarese capital, he said: “India attaches the highest importance to its relations with Myanmar. …India welcomes Myanmar’s transition to democratic governance and the steps taken by the government of Myanmar towards a more broad-based and inclusive reconciliation process.”

The Prime Minister also looked forward to the “opportunity” of meeting Aung San Suu Kyi at Yangon after his meeting here tomorrow with Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein and others of his government.

The visit comes at a time when the world too is looking at Myanmar with new expectations and strategies. Once a pariah in the international community, which attracted the free world’s scorn and sanctions, Myanmar is suddenly changing into a country the world is making a scramble to reach out and invest.

Japan’s example is a testimony to the new international response to Myanmar. Once the largest donor of aid to the country, it stopped the aid as a mark of condemnation of Myanmar’s brutal suppression of its democracy movement. It is now all set to give Myanmar the “most favoured nation” status.

The Prime Minister’s visit is the final confirmation that India has joined the race in earnest. India has much more stakes than any other country in a new engagement with Myanmar.

First on India’s wish list from Myanmar is, of course, peace and stability on the two countries’ border, where armed and long-drawn ethnic insurgencies have caused security concerns for New Delhi. Four states in India’s Northeast border Myanmar and the insurgencies in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur have survived on the shelter and other support the militants have long received from hideouts inside Myanmar.

India’s first attempts to reach out to Myanmar’s rulers were necessitated by the threats posed by the northeastern militants.

It was also the main reason for New Delhi changing its position on Suu Kyi’s democracy movement. Almost in a defence of that shift in policy, an Indian official said: “You’ve to deal with whoever is in power. We’ve our own interests, whether it is Nepal, Myanmar or some other neighbour.”

The second most important item on India’s list of “interests” in Myanmar is energy. Although some Indian companies have joined the race for new oil and gas blocks in Myanmar, the sector is hugely dominated by China, which took advantage of the world staying away from Myanmar and penetrated deep into this country’s economic and security systems.

The northeastern question merges into the broader economic issues, as India puts a great deal of emphasis on a new era of road and other forms of connectivity through Myanmar to the rest of the region. The ultimate Indian wish is to open up a corridor for the land-locked northeastern states toward the Bay of Bengal.

Two other areas where Indian and Myanmarese wishes converge are education and telecommunications. The new urban class in Myanmar expects India to open up fresh frontiers in school and higher education. In this, India is believed to have greater opportunities than China.

Telecommunication in Myanmar is a state monopoly, utterly inefficient and prohibitively expensive for the common people. All that might change with Indian players entering the field and starting a telecommunications revolution here.

HT Media –China wary of bilateral ties between India and Myanmar
By Pramit Pal Chaudhuri |  Mon 28 May, 2012

Naypyitaw, May 28 — China is both Myanmar’s most influential foreign neighbour and its most nervous. No country is as deeply entrenched in the economy of Myanmar while being so wary of the political reforms that began there last year. This poses a challenge to India on several levels.

Senior Myanmar officials, say diplomatic sources, told their Indian counterparts last year that China was the only external player that could destroy the reform process in one fell swoop. Beijing’s concerns were geopolitical. The fear is that a democratic Myanmar will gravitate towards the US and become a democratic thorn in China’s southern flank.

India has already warned Washington that the US should consider a lower profile in Myanmar. However, say US officials, China seems suspicious whether the West is loud or silent. “Every where we go, all the Burmese want greater engagement.”

China’s economic hold on Myanmar goes back to Deng Xiaoping’s determination to fill the void in Myanmar’s economy left by Western sanctions. Factories came up all across Myanmar’s eastern border, especially near the Shan state areas. Today, in cities like Mandalay and across Upper Burma, China’s economic presence is overwhelming.

Democracies like India, Japan and the US already informally discuss how they can work together economically in Myanmar. Infrastructure proposals like the Trilateral Highway running from India to Vietnam top the list of ideas.

The Chinese have not helped their cause by working so closely with the military all these years. Says David Methieson of Human Rights Watch, “Burmese felt a sense of victory when their government cancelled a $ 3. 6 billion dam last year.” While described as a concession to minori demands, there were reports that it reflected growing anti- chinese sentiment in the Mysnmar army as well.

Chinese practices like importing their own labour have also made Burmese unhappy, says Thin Thin Aung of the newspaper Mizzima. “Their projects give us no jobs. ”

Knowing they have little standing with the pro-democracy leaders like Aung San Suukyi, the Chinese have sought to cultivate other sources of influence. Former Indian Ambassador to Myanmar, Rajiv Bhatia, says Beijing has three targets in mind. One is the top Myanmar military leadership, the other is the military’s politicsl wing the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, and the two speakers of the Myanmar Parliament – Khin Aung Myint and Thurs Shwe Mann.

Suukyi has been careful to send the right signals to China. Asked about the scrapping of the dam, she merely said that the Chinese should not be blamed but rather the Myanmar officials who agreed to such an unfair deal in the first place. Says Mathieson, “She sent the signal that we won’t hurt you. You can deal with us.”

This is practical. China’s accomplishments in Myanmar dwarf anything India has done, even though India is in a perfect position to serve as an alternative for Myanmar without causing Beijing alarm. The Myanmarese know they cannot live without their northern neighbour. They have a saying, “When China spits, Burma swims. “Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.

Daily Telegraph – India to open super highway to Burma and Thailand
India is to open a new four lane motorway to allow traders and tourists to drive from its eastern tea state of Assam into Burma, Thailand and eventually Cambodia and Vietnam.
By Dean Nelson, New Delhi
12:57PM BST 29 May 2012

The new “trilateral highway” is aimed at creating a new economic zone ranging from Calcutta on the Bay of Bengal to Ho Chi Minh City on the South China Sea.

The first phase of the project was agreed during Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s visit to Burma this week when he and President Thein Sein set a 2016 deadline to complete a super highway linking Guwahati in Assam to Burma’s border with Thailand via Mandalay and the former capital Rangoon.

According to analysts, the road is a key part of a plan to open the “Mekong-India Corridor” to link the world’s second fastest growing market – India – with the new Asian Tiger economies of Indo-China.

Until now plans to open this new economic zone, which bypasses China, the world’s fastest growing economy and superpower, have been hampered by international sanctions against the former military regime in Burma.

But with the gradual easing of sanctions following the series of democratic reforms unveiled by Burma’s president Thein Sein since last August, the obstacles have now cleared. For India, the new highway will open up new oil and gas opportunities off the coast of Burma, and also Vietnam, as well as easier access to Japanese products made in Thailand.

It would also bring new wealth to its poor and marginalised North-Eastern states like Manipur and Nagaland, which have been blighted by local insurgencies and heavy security.

The highway will also recall the historic ties between India and Burma which unravelled following their independence from Britain after the Second World War.

During most of the colonial period Burma was governed as a province of British India from Calcutta and later New Delhi. Aung San Suu Kyi, like other children of Burma’s elite, was a pupil and university student in India.

Mohan Guruswamy of the New Delh-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, said a two lane highway connecting the Indian border to Mandalay, 375 miles away, had already been built, and the next phases will be to broaden it to a four-lane road and extend it a further 375 miles to Rangoon.

“The idea is that you can get in a car or bus and drive to Bangkok from Guwahati. Burma was the hurdle, but now it has opened up, thanks to the Americans. It marks a great opening of a new economic zone,” he said.

INDOlink – Tata Motors Signs Distribution Agreement in Myanmar

New Delhi: Tata Motors said it has signed a distribution agreement with Apex Greatest Industrial(AGI), Myanmar, for selling its commercial vehicles and passenger cars in the country. As part of the agreement, AGI will distribute trucks assembled at the Magwe facility, which the company had set up on behalf of the Myanmar government, and also commercial vehicles and passenger cars directly imported from India, a Tata Motors spokesperson said.

In March 2010, Tata Motors had signed a turnkey contract with state-owned Myanmar Automobile & Diesel Industries Ltd (MADI) for setting up a heavy truck assembly plant at Magwe in central Myanmar.

It was funded by a USD 20 million Line of Credit from the Government of India. The plant, inaugurated in December 2010, is now operational, the company said.

The plant has a capacity of producing 1,000 vehicles per annum initially and has the flexibility of augmenting up to 5,000 per year, it added.

The distribution agreement was signed by Tata Motors Head – International Business (Commercial Vehicles) R T Wasan and Tata Motors Head – International Business (Passenger Vehicles) Johnny Oommen on behalf of the company and Chairman of AGI Myanmar U Kyi Thein.

Business Standard – India, Myanmar ink pact on petroleum exploration
Press Trust of India / Nay Pyi Taw May 28, 2012, 21:45

Indian and Myanmar today inked three pacts including on exploration and production of petroleum and leasing of a paper and pulp mill.

A big business delegation led by Sunil Bharti Mittal was accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is here for a two-day visit.

The three MoUs were signed in presence of V S Seshadri, Ambassador of India to Myanmar.

An agreement on production sharing of contract for exploration and production of Petroleum was signed between Jubilant Oil & Gas Private Ltd and Parami Energy Development Company Ltd and Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise on production for Onshore Block PSC-I.

A MoU for leasing the Thar Paung Paper and Pulp Mill between JK Group and Myanmar’s Industry Ministry was also signed.

The business delegation also had an interaction with Myanmar President U Thein Sein and several other cabinet Ministers of Myanmar.

“Sein invited the Indian industry to invest in pharmaceutical, energy, manufacturing, telecom and IT,” CII said in a statement.

“He said the SME sector had great potential for technology absorption SME sector in Myanmar,” it said.

The delegation includes Hari S Bhartia, B Muthuraman, Sanjay Kirloskar and Atul Punj.

The Hindu – Myanmar’s capital is not a teeming metropolis
Nirupama Subramanian
NAYPYITAW, May 29, 2012

One million people are said to live in Myanmar’s capital city, but you would never guess from its vast emptiness that its population is almost the same as that of Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu.

Almost all Ministries have completed the shift to this new city that the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s Army, quietly began constructing in 2002, and inaugurated four years later as the new capital.

Since then, Naypyitaw, which means royal city, has got itself a couple of plazas that sell cheap imports and have theatres screening Chinese, Thai, and Hollywood movies.

But save for these and a couple of market squares with shops and stalls that hawk vegetables and groceries, cloth, medicines and hardware — one boasts a spa and a spectacles shop called American Vision — there is little sign of urban civic life in this strikingly un-peopled city.

Currently, even the government apartments — with different coloured roofs for single and family housing, apartments for the military and senior officials — have none of the usual markers of residential neighbourhoods, such as clothes hung out to dry, kids playing or parked vehicles.

The trees, recently planted, are yet to attain their full height, and the sparse vegetation gives no sign that several decades ago, this was a thick teak forest.

It was to this city that Air India One jetted in on Sunday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his entourage, as he began his visit to Myanmar. As he was driven to the hotel, flag-waving children had strung themselves out near the approach to welcome him. The capital has only one high school.

On Monday morning, Dr. Singh was driven for his meeting with President Thein Sein in a motorcade on a sweeping 20-lane road that can double up as a runway, and has been quite likely designed for that dual-purpose.

Naypyitaw’s concretised roads, with a minimum of eight lanes, and increasing according to the zone — those in the government zone are the widest — are a drag racer’s dream come true: wide, smooth and barely a vehicle in sight. Policemen blocked the roads during the motorcade, but they might as well haven’t taken the trouble — at each block, there were just a couple of motorcyclists or mopeds, and at one, there was no vehicle at all.

The Presidential Palace is apparently the centrepiece of a capital that has no centre beside it. No one knows how much, but the Tatmadaw must have poured billions into its construction and that of the nearby parliament buildings. In the vastness and isolation of the setting, the fantasyland-like architecture seems designed to overwhelm.

The city boasts a dedicated hotel zone that has no less than 11 hotels, and another under-construction hotel zone, but it is still a destination only for official delegations or foreign businessmen who have dealings with the government. Foreign tourists need a permit to visit the city, and until recently, even Myanmarese from different places needed permits to visit the capital.

In any case, there is nothing much yet to see in Naypyitaw. Locals suggest a recently constructed replica of Yangon’s Shwedagon pagoda — the height of the spire one metre less than the original — as a sightseeing possibility.

Five white elephants are being reared by the temple. For the kings of Burma, albino elephants were a symbol of their strength and endurance. If the animals are at all associated with a more recent meaning, no one is talking of that.

The Tatmadaw never gave a reason for shifting the capital from Yangon, 320 km to the south, a city of six million people that is culturally, economically and politically alive, despite the years of international isolation.

But when it happened, people cited a few possibilities: the Army feared a western military offensive on Yangon; the superstitious brass of the junta made the decision on the basis of astrological advice; and it wanted to move the seat of government to a location where opposition protests would never have the paralysing effect as in the politically-charged urbanscape of Yangon.

While it may still take years for the emptiness to fill up, the shift now seems irreversible. Private property developers are building grand villas in the city and offering them as investments for the future.

Even the Opposition apparently accepts the shift. During her reconciliation talks with the Myanmar government, Aung San Suu Kyi, the chairperson of the National League for Democracy, travelled to
Naypyitaw to meet President Thein Sein. She recently came here again from her home in Yangon, to be sworn in as a Member of Parliament, and stayed at the hotel where Prime Minister Singh is a state guest.

For Dr. Singh to stay two nights in this city and touch down for barely a few hours in Yangon on Tuesday to meet the pro-democracy leader is yet another iteration of the message that New Delhi has repeatedly sought to send: it is here to build on its engagement with the rulers of Myanmar, irrespective of who they are, and while welcoming Ms. Suu Kyi’s participation in the country’s political process, India isn’t here to dictate the pace of political reforms.

May 29, 2012 21:03 PM
Thailand Prepares To Receive Suu Kyi

BANGKOK, May 29 (Bernama) — Authorities of Thailand’s northwestern Tak province are preparing to welcome Myanmar opposition leader and key democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who will visit Karen refugee camps in the province, as part of her visit here to attend the 2012 World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia in Bangkok later this week.

According to Thai News Agency (TNA), this will be her first overseas trip after 1988.

Suu Kyi, who is also the newly-elected member of the Myanmar House of Representatives, will arrive in Thailand Tuesday night for the forum, which will gather senior government officials and key business leaders of East Asia at Bangkok’s Shangri-La Hotel from May 31-June 1.

Upon her arrival, Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is scheduled to visit Myanmar people at the nationality verification centre in Bangkok’s suburban Samut Sakhon Province and at a shrimp market on Rama II Road on Wednesday.

29 May 2012 | Last updated at 08:35AM
New Straits Times – It’s all water under Myanmar’s bridges
By Andrew R.C. Marshall

BETTER TIES: India may offer ports and bridges to Myanmar, but is that enough to forget the bad blood between the two countries, asks Andrew R.C. Marshall

IN northwest Myanmar, where the Kaladan River flows out into the Bay of Bengal, the two giant arms of a half-built wharf enfold the estuarine mud with steel and concrete.

Their embrace is fraternal — Myanmar’s giant neighbour, India, is funding the new port in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state — but also strategic.

The port is part of a US$214 million (RM640 million) river and road network that will carve a trade route into India’s landlocked northeast and underscore New Delhi’s determination to capitalise on Myanmar’s growing importance at Asia’s crossroads.

Manmohan Singh will seek to bolster ties during the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Myanmar in 25 years. Manmohan met President Thein Sein yesterday.

His official agenda includes road, rail, waterways and air links.

However, he must also overcome a history of bad blood with Myanmar, where Indian investments are dwarfed by regional rival China.

President Thein Sein’s government has held peace talks with ethnic minority rebels, relaxed strict media censorship, allowed trade unions and protests and held a by-election dominated by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party.

As Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation, trade between the countries is already swelling.

Myanmar’s government expected two-way trade with India to nearly double in two years to US$2 billion, from US$1.4 billion in the year to March 30, a figure that was nearly 30 per cent higher from the previous year, said Myanmar’s Commerce Ministry.

India should be a natural partner, with ties stretching back to the ancient Buddhist emperor Ashoka and, more recently, a shared experience of British colonialism and World War 2.

But its business interests in the former Burma had been “few and far between” since the mass expulsion of Indian merchants after the military seized power in 1962, said Thant Myint-U, author of Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia.

“Many in India remember all too well that this was the country that nationalised Indian businesses and expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Indians with literally nothing more than the shirts on their backs.”

One hopeful symbol of improved ties is Sittwe.

The two countries formally agreed on the so-called Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project in April 2008, just seven months after Myanmar’s military junta crushed nationwide pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

Work began on Sittwe port in September 2010, shortly before the former military junta held a rigged election that brought to power a quasi-civilian but surprisingly reformist government.
Indian conglomerate Essar Group is building the port on 70,000 square metres of landfill in Sittwe’s centre.

It should be ready in two years, said Myanmar’s Commerce Ministry, accommodating ships from the Indian city of Kolkata, a 539km voyage away across the Bay of Bengal, and handling up to 500,000 tonnes a year.

From Sittwe, ships will sail up the Kaladan River to Paletwa, where Essar will build a second, smaller port.

A 122km highway will connect Paletwa to the Indian state of Mizoram. The two ports and dredge work will cost US$74 million. The highway will cost US$140 million.

India is Myanmar’s third-biggest export market after Thailand and China. But Thant Myint-U plays down Myanmar’s economic importance to India. “Myanmar is extremely important for India’s northeast, but because the northeast itself rarely gets Delhi’s attention, that in itself doesn’t count for much.”

However, New Delhi is aware of Myanmar’s strategic significance “because of China’s increasing economic presence and anxiety about a possible future Chinese presence on the Bay of Bengal”, he said.

Not far south of Sittwe, Chinese money is funding a bigger port and special economic zone in Kyaukphyu, a coastal town where Myanmar-China pipelines reach the Bay of Bengal, creating a passage from western China to South and Southeast Asia and allowing shipments of fuel and natural resources to avoid the Malacca Strait.

An Essar company official said “communication problems” had been a headache during the project, with Myanmar officials slow to provide information and language issues also a hurdle. The company, however, would consider further projects in the country, given they had worked there.

“Business is all about relationships, and we have been meeting the right people,” the official said.

A delegation of Indian business officials will join Manmohan on his visit, said an Indian Foreign Ministry official, adding that India was looking at setting up a special economic zone.

Aung San Suu Kyi was once lionised by New Delhi, which gave her the Jawaharlal Nehru Award in 1993 and Myanmar’s dictatorship the cold shoulder.

But with growing investment in Myanmar by regional rival China, the world’s biggest democracy has forged closer ties, inviting former dictator Senior General Than Shwe on an official state visit to India in 2004.

Three years later, after he presided over a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks, India was widely criticised for its muted response amid international outrage.

Thant Myint-U said: “Manmohan Singh has to do more than offer ports, bridges and roads, as the Chinese do.

“Instead, he has to delve deeply into the very long history of cultural ties between the two countries and come up with a new vision for Indo-Burmese relations.

“The problem is that no one in Burma thinks of India when they think of the future.” Reuters

The Irrawaddy – Business Visitors to Get ‘One-minute’ Visas
By AUNG YE NAING / THE IRRAWADDY| May 29, 2012

Business travelers, aid workers and others on official business in Burma will soon be able to receive “one-minute” visas on arrival, according to a report by state-run media on Monday.

Maung Maung Than, the director general of Burma’s Immigration and National Registration Department, said the new arrival visas were made possible by the department’s web-based connections with immigration departments in 27 countries around the world.

The visas, which according to the Myanmar Ahlin newspaper will be available within one minute of arrival in the country, are primarily aimed at international businessmen and NGO workers. Plans to open five new counters at Rangoon’s international airport for these visitors were also announced.

Citizens of a total of 27 countries, including member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Australia, India, Japan, Taiwan and European countries, are entitled to apply for the visa.

The visa fees will vary according to the length of stay. One-day visas are US $20, while 28- and 70-day visas cost $40 and $50, respectively.

Besides the visa fee, applicants must also hold a passport valid for at least six months and provide a passport photo, an invitation letter from a local company and a photocopy of the company’s license or
registration.

The move comes just weeks after the government announced that it would introduce a visa-on-arrival scheme for tourists from Asean countries in June.

This will be the third time that Burma has introduced a visa-on-arrival system. In 2010, they were offered until several months before elections were held in November of that year.

The Irrawaddy – Burma Needs to Take Stock of the Market
By WILLIAM BOOT / THE IRRAWADDY| May 29, 2012

Burma’s central bank and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) are expected to sign an agreement shortly to develop a national stock exchange, but economists and financial analysts see little prospect of early progress.

Reports have suggested that an outline agreement could be signed by the end of this month, however there is a mountain of problems to climb before any serious real-time exchange can be up and running.

Not least of the problems the TSE faces is a lack of corporate law and the absence of a corporate culture among most Burmese companies.

“Being charitable, one might call this [stock exchange] an aspirational rather than an immediately practical one,” Australian economist and editor of Burma Economic Watch, Sean Turnell, told The Irrawaddy.

Developing a strong and viable financial market and open stock trading system is a long-term process and requires political will as well as business commitment. It’s a problem facing much bigger and far more developed economies than Burma’s. For example, despite its strong influence on Burma’s economy, neighbouring giant China lacks a fully-fledged market system.

“China has transformed itself within a couple of decades into the world’s second largest economy, powered by a labor-intensive manufacturing sector. However, despite its vast production capacity and trade links with global markets, China lacks depth in its financial sector,” says a new study by Chatham House, the London think-tank.

“A close look at China’s international investment position as a percentage of global stocks shows that China’s foreign direct investment and international portfolio assets and liabilities are a tiny percentage—less than 3 percent—of total global stocks,” said the study.

The World Bank says decades of economic isolation from Europe and the United States have left Burma with an economy highly dependent on China.

That coupled with poor economic management by the military and its crony business friends “has resulted in a weak private sector and under-developed financial sector.

“[Burma] remains a primarily agricultural economy with the main share of its GDP derived from agriculture, livestock and fisheries, and forestry, although exports of gas and other natural resources are becoming increasingly significant. Manufacturing constitutes a small share of recorded economic activity, and state industries continue to play a large role in that sector,” the World Bank said in a report on Burma.

Finance industry analysts and even Burmese Finance Ministry managers have voiced concerns about the absence of any business structure in Burma, which is due to decades of domination by military-run firms or businesses with close junta links which are now forever tarnished.

The country still lacks a securities exchange law. And new draft foreign investment law failed to get finalized in the last session of parliament. It will be July before further parliamentary scrutiny and checks and balances on such legislation can resume, although backroom work is doubtless in progress.

The primary task of the TSE will be to help the central bank draw up exchange rules and give firm guidance on clean business codes. There is no practical system of company supervision in place; accounting standards are lax; tax avoidance is widespread.

“Private companies have started considering going public. But in practical terms, the current situation and business atmosphere are not favorable enough,” an unnamed central bank official was quoted by the Myanmar Times as saying last week. “The majority of our businesses are still weak in terms of corporate governance and corporate culture.”

The chief executive of emerging markets investment fund specialist Leopard Capital, Douglas Clayton, told AFP: “There are severe capacity constraints in human resources and physical infrastructure.

[Burma] is simply not ready to absorb the tidal wave of projects foreigners can imagine starting there,” he said.

The Japanese trade ministry is still engaged in talks with the Burmese government on a new bilateral investment agreement aimed at smoothing the way into Burma for Japanese investors. These talks could continue for much of the rest of this year, although Tokyo has said it hopes for agreement by the time of the next Asean summit in November.

Markets consultancy Vriens & Partners, based in Singapore, thinks the reputational risk to prominent companies from moving into Burma are lessening since Western sanctions were eased, but that doesn’t mean the way in is any easier.

“The government has declared it wants to have Western investment. That doesn’t mean that they really understand what it takes to re-join the world,” Hans Vriens told the Chicago Tribune. “The regulatory system [the Burmese] have is so outdated.”

However, the involvement of well-run US companies ranging from manufacturing to natural resources “will help the country establish international best practices, the rule of law, increased transparency, respect for labor rights and environmental protection, and measures to rein in corruption,” said the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But in a new report on Burma, the independent Center believes investors will face difficulties “until the basic business architecture is in place.”

“Beyond the ability to move money through international banks, US companies need efficient roads and ports and reliable electricity before they will build factories.”

Some finance industry opinion thinks it could be 2015 before Burma is anywhere near ready to open and operate an international-standard stock market.

For the moment, the country must make do with the backstreet Myanmar Securities Exchange curio. Established in 1996 by another Japanese financial agency, the Daiwa Institute of Research, this one-room midget exchange in Rangoon studiously tracks by hand the stocks of two just two companies, both partially government-owned.

It’s an image the reformers will surely want to lose.

The Irrawaddy – Suu Kyi’s Thai Trip Signifies Key Moment
By KYAW ZWA MOE / THE IRRAWADDY| May 29, 2012

Only now does Aung San Suu Kyi really seem to feel free. After more than two decades keeping herself “prisoner” inside Burma, the Noble Peace Prize winner will leave her homeland to visit neighboring Thailand.

Although Suu Kyi was under house arrest for 15 out of the last 24 years, her captors always indicated she was free to leave the country. The ruling generals of the former junta were desperate to be finally rid of The Lady and so weaken the “troublemakers” she led.

Suu Kyi’s fear was that she would not be allowed to return to Burma. The military leaders of the time thought that if she was outside the country the democracy movement she joined in 1988 would die down. That is why Suu Kyi chose not even to visit England for the funeral of her late husband, British scholar Michael Eris, who died of prostate cancer in early 1999.

The political reforms initiated by President Thein Sein’s nominally civilian government since last year seemed to have convinced Suu Kyi that she can now travel freely both inside Burma and abroad.

Even before the 66-year-old actually arrives in Bangkok late on Tuesday, she has already stirred enormous excitement within the Burmese community in Thailand as well as other people such as diplomats due to hear her address the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia later this week.

And personally the trip will surely be exciting—it will be a vastly different world Suu Kyi encounters today than when she left England in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother at their family home by Rangoon’s Inya Lake.

In the middle of June, Suu Kyi will also visit Switzerland, Norway and the UK. She will give a speech at the International Labor Organization conference in Geneva and later address the British Parliament—a rare honor only reserved for distinguished figures such as South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela and US President Barack Obama.

These meetings will present Suu Kyi with a good opportunity to learn first-hand the different perspectives of world leaders and scholars, while also lecturing them on the true political situation in Burma.

Tuesday’s trip to Thailand will resemble a fact-finding visit should she decide to visit her many countrymen living in the Kingdom. From exiled Burmese dissidents and migrant workers to refugees dwelling in temporary camps by the border, practically everyone is hoping to see the democracy icon.

Since her release in late 2010, Suu Kyi has been busy meeting diplomats, international dignitaries and assorted world leaders. But she has never had a chance to meet exiled dissidents—most of whom have decided not to return home without an official amnesty and formal procedures despite the president’s repeated invitations. And Suu Kyi has likewise never seen any of the refugee camps or harsh working conditions of economic migrants.

There are crucial lessons she can learn by experiencing these places. On Wednesday, Suu Kyi is likely to visit Samut Sakhon where hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers toil in unforgiving circumstances.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that she will also visit Mae Sot, a stronghold of political dissent, as well as nearby Mae La refugee camp—the biggest of nine border camps in which around 140,000 Burmese nationals have taken refuge for years due to political persecution and ongoing conflicts between government troops and ethnic armies.

Many want to go home, but do not think that the political or economic situation on the ground in Burma has improved sufficiently to herald their return.

“We all want her to visit here. If she visits our camp, we want to tell her to create a political climate for us to be able to return home. We want to go home,” Saw Tun Tun, the ethnic Karen leader of Mae La Refugee Camp, told The Irrawaddy. “We want her to hear our voices from our heart and see how difficult life is here.”

Saw Tun Tun and his family have lived in the camp for two decades after he fled his home in Karen State to avoid possible arrest for his involvement in the nationwide democracy uprising of 1988 during which he was a medical student.

“In short, there is no safety for us back in our homes over there,” said the camp leader, in his early 40s. “Maybe we might all go home if the 2015 election produces a genuine democratic government.”

He added that for refugees to return home must entail three stages—preparations in the camps, returning to Burma and reintegration back into their old communities. Saw Tun Tun desperately wants Suu Kyi to hear these views from his camp.

Htoo Chit, the director of the Grassroots Human Rights Education and Development project based in southern Thailand, also wants Suu Kyi to meet Thai labor associations, academics, activists and politicians who can help improve conditions for the couple of million Burmese migrant workers who often face exploitation and abuses by their employees.

Suu Kyi is due to meet Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra as well as opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and it is hoped she will bring up this thorny issue.

Some exiles say they feel left out of the reform process as they are unable to return home yet. They have many things to discuss with Suu Kyi, but it is not certain if she will be able to have separate meetings with all exiled and ethnic leaders.

Moe Zaw Oo, a leading member of the National League for Democracy (Liberated Area) based in exile, sees Suu Kyi’s trip as a multipurpose—to attend the WEF and meet the Burmese diaspora in Thailand.

“If she can manage to visit migrant workers’ sites and refugee camps, she can observe the two biggest issues among the Burmese community in Thailand,” said Moe Zaw Oo, who used to work with Suu Kyi as a youth leader at her Rangoon party headquarters after 1988.

The hope is that if Suu Kyi meets Saw Tun Tun in Mae La Camp and hears his views as well as other representatives of migrant worker groups and exiled dissents then she might come up with concrete ideas regarding how to help solve these urgent issues and urge Thein Sein’s government to speed up its reform.

“I believe that Amay [mother] Suu will take our voices and feeling to President U Thein Sein and the Parliament,” said Saw Tun Tun. “To date, things are not ready for us to return home.”

Burmese gov’t websites have little information – some don’t exist
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 16:55 Phone Thaw Zin

Rangoon (Mizzima) – Looking for information about the Burmese government?

Don’t go to the official governmental websites because most provide little information and often they do not update what information they have for months or years.

In short, they are nearly worthless compared to neighboring countries, which recognize the importance of the Internet and public communication.

Thirty out of the 34 ministries of the new government have official websites.

Shockingly, the agency charged managing the government information and communicating with the media and the general public, the Ministry of Information, has no website. Sources said the ministry provides sometimes provides information via modins.net.

Other key ministries without a website include the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Border Affairs and the Ministry of Electric Power (2).

Moreover, although the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Sports, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education have their respective website addresses, but you cannot access them.

To see a list of ministry websites and addresses, go to http://www.myanmar.com/ministries/index.html

One journalist said, “If we want to get some facts about our country, we have to look for information from such places as the CIA’s World Factbook,” or other outside sources, some of which appear to have more information about the government than the government itself.

“The websites of the ministries in Burma are almost useless,” he said, and some are more than useless, because they do not even exist. Needless to say, there is almost no information on the ministry websites in English.

Both the former junta and the new government claim they have tried to implement E-government system by using the Internet, but there is no evidence that any ministry has come anywhere near to accomplishing that lofty goal.

Perhaps the most up-to-date ministry website is the Ministry of Communication, Posts and Telegraph. A quick survey showed that it publishes, on average, about one time a week.

Aung Zaw Myint, an executive committee member of Myanmar Computer Professionals Association, said the ministries should make a priority of effectively implementing the E-government system because it can benefit not only citizens but also the government itself.

Although all of the official governmental websites have weaknesses, the official website of the president’s office, which was launched in early May, is more up-to-date. More people visit the president’s office website to try to get a sense of what’s going on, according to regular Internet users.

‘Urgent need’ for power plants around Rangoon, Mandalay: minister
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 12:05 Mizzima News

Burma is looking to build a large industrial park complex in the Bassein region west of Rangoon for domestic industries, in addition to more electricity power plants around Rangoon and Mandalay, according to the industry minister.

Industry Minister Soe Thane discussed Burma’s energy needs and investment options on the sidelines of the “Future of Asia” conference last week in Tokyo. No date for the construction of the park complex was given.

Soe Thane currently heads an unofficial body that grants concessions and tax holidays to investors, he told The Bangok Post. He said that setting up a formal investment promotion body would help attract more foreign direct investment into the country.

“There is an urgent need to build at least two plants around Yangon, and maybe one around Mandalay,” he told the Post. “All need to be near a river to make it easier to transport the heavy coal.”

“These projects need to be undertaken as soon as possible because only about 25 per cent of the country is currently connected to the grid,” he said. “We had not anticipated many things and the speed of change has been so fast.”

Over the past week, demonstrators in Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities have protested the lack of electricity.

“We are lagging behind most economies in this region, and you can say we’re late in this game,” he told the newspaper.

He said “Parliament will vote on new regulations for foreign direct investment, after having voted recently to allow foreign investors in SEZs [special economic zones] to repatriate 100 per cent of profits.”

“The Bassein industrial park would not be an SEZ like Dawei on the coast,” he said. “Dawei is an SEZ and the new area would not in any way be a competitor, although the new zone will also have a deep sea port, but with more than 1,200 kilometres of coastal shoreline, we can have many deep sea ports.”

Also under study, he said, is an SEZ at Thilawa with Japanese investors, with a decision to be made likely by year-end.

Soe Thane said that Dawei was making slow progress. The Thai government had the responsibility to look for investors, he said, and the lead contractor Italian-Thai Development Plc (ITD) seemed to be taking a lot of time.

ITD appears to be struggling to raise financing, say observers, who said some investors believed the new Burmese government is not as committed to the megaproject as the former military junta, which granted the concession.

Soe Thane said the government still believed in Dawei.

“This project is beneficial not only to Thailand and Myanmar but is also a corridor for all of Southeast Asia so it has to go ahead, but how is a different issue,” he was quoted as saying. “If Italian-Thai can do it, they should. If they cannot, then we will have to review it.”

The Burmese government’s decision to reject plans for a 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant to serve the Dawei complex, in which ITD would own 75 per cent, has also thrown a cloud over the project. The government bowed to pressure from environmental groups and local residents, who said the plant was not environmentally safe.

Soe Thane indicated that authorities may soften their stand, and any new power plant that is approved would have to be more efficient and smaller. He said he was impressed by the clean-burning coal-fired plants he’d seen in Japan.

World Economic Forum to focus on ‘connectivity’
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 12:23 Mizzima News

The upcoming 21st World Economic Forum on East Asia in Bangkok will concentrate on building up regional connectivity, organizers told the media on Monday.

“This year’s meeting is an exceptional opportunity not only for leaders from East Asia, but also from outside the region, as the Asean countries are a major evolving geopolitical and geo-economic pillar of the global economy,” Sushant Palakurthi Rao, a senior director and head of Asia for the World Economic Forum, told a press conference in Bangkok.

Rao confirmed that Burma’s President Thein Sein has canceled plans to attend the forum, which opens on Wednesday, but he said that Thein Sein said he would visit Thailand several days later.

Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is scheduled to attend the forum, where she will take part in a one-on-one conversation and attend a forum on women’s roles and issues.

Rao warned against the risks that would disrupt the long-term economic growth of the region and underlined the need of working together to minimize negative impacts.

“Our meeting is taking place at a time of tremendous economic and political transformation. Therefore, enhancing connectivity in the region will be critical to the region’s future growth,” he said.

More than 630 participants, some 200 more than expected, from 50 countries will gather in Bangkok from Wednesday to Friday to exchange views on regional cooperation under the theme “Shaping the Region’s Future through Connectivity.”

Four heads of state or government from Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam will attend, and more than 450 business leaders together with other members of civil society and academia.

Kittiratt Na-Ranong, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, said his government was prepared in terms of organizing and security for the meeting.

“The World Economic Forum on East Asia will not only be a great opportunity to showcase Thailand’s progress in the economic and political sphere, but will also be a good chance for government and business leaders from around the world to discuss how to increase bilateral and regional cooperation,” he said.

Rao hailed Thailand as an ideal place to host this year’ s forum.

“Thailand is Asean’s second largest economy and one of the driving forces of regional economy. It is also surrounded by emerging economies and connects two giants, China and India,” he said.

DVB News – Ministry orders jade mines to close during rainy season
By KO HTWE
Published: 29 May 2012

People look for precious stones in the mine dump piled by major mining companies at a jade mine in Pharkant township in Burma’s Kachin state on 10 January 2010. (Reuters)

The Ministry of Mining have issued a directive ordering all private mining companies operating in Kachin state’s Hpakant town to temporarily suspend their operations.

During a meeting with private mining companies on 22 March, the ministry instructed the enterprises to halt operations in jade-rich region by the end of this month.

The ministry’s director general Win Htein told DVB the order was issued to promote safety during the rainy season, which will hopefully prevent flooding and landslides.

“The Ministry of Mining has notified [companies] to put their mining operations on hold by the end of May throughout the four to five month rainy season period [to prevent] disasters as well as to protect the environment,” said Win Htein.

“They will be allowed to resume operations in the [dry] season.

However, observers speculate that the directive may be an attempt to prevent mining companies from providing the Kachin Independence Army, who are said to levy taxes on mining groups, with revenue.

The KIA has been fighting with government troops in the area after a ceasefire between the two sides broke down in June 2011.

A local resident in Hpakant said mine workers in the area have begun packing up and leaving.

“It’s rather constructive to have the mining operations stop – a small amount of locals who rely on [mining] may go jobless but on the other hand, this will prevent the destruction of natural forests and hills and is a lot more meaningful for our country,” said the Hpakant local.

The Ministry of Mining previously issued an order prohibiting gold mining within areas of the four major rivers in Burma, and ordered them to plants trees in places that were deforested.

DVB News – Rebels call for intervention as UN sends aid
By DVB
Published: 29 May 2012

The Kachin Independence Organisation are accusing the Burmese army of participating in ethnic cleansing and have asked the United Nations to intervene in the conflict, as the international body prepares to deliver aid to refugees in the northern most state.

“The Burmese army is now engaged in ethnic cleansing and the conflict has now turned from one of political to racial in nature,” wrote KIO Chairman Zwang Hra in a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 15 May.

“The time is now crucial for the UN to intervene before the conflict becomes even wider and more complex.”

Although President Thein Sein allegedly ordered troops to stop their assault against the Kachin Independence Army last December, fighting persists between the rebels and the Burmese army.

“The president has instructed the government troops to stop any offensive against the Kachin Independence Army, but in some cases the order might not reach down all the way to the local area,” said Railway Minister Aung Min during a press conference in Shan state on 19 May.

“As far as the Tatmadaw is concerned, they’re not taking the offensive, they’re reacting to what they’ve been subjected to – meaning they’re undertaking defensive action.”

The UN is set to deliver aid to the refugees living in the KIO and Kachin Independence Army’s stronghold Laiza during the first week of June. Both NGOs and the UN have had been unable to provide the necessary aid to the estimated 75,000 people who have been displaced by the conflict as few relief convoys are allowed into the conflict zone.

A 17-year ceasefire ended last June when fighting erupted in the Kachin state, after the government demanded that the KIA join a state-run Border Guard Force. According to KIO spokesperson, James Lun Dau, there have been 1,400 clashes between the KIA and the Burmese army since last June.

Ordnance explodes in Kachin capital

A bomb exploded yesterday morning in Kachin state’s capital Myitkyina, according to the city’s Police Station-2.

There were no reported injuries.

An official on duty at Myitkyina Police Station-2 said the bomb exploded around 6am yesterday morning on a traffic median on Union Road and another unexploded ordnance was found lying underneath a tree about 10 feet away.

“We have been on high [alert] since lately and are having training [sessions] with bomb detectors.”

A similar incident occurred on 5 May when a bomb exploded in Ayemyatharyar Ward and was followed by another explosion that injured two officers who were investigating the scene. In April, three people were injured after two bombs exploded in the Kachin capital.

The Burmese state media often blames the KIA for the bombings, while the group continues to deny any involvement.