Dewei Port in the Dream : From Burma view

Dewei Port in the Dream : From Burma view

Thailand’s Dawei Port Dream ‘Should Be Abandoned’ as Unworkable

A senior analyst-academic in Bangkok has described Thailand’s ambitions for creating an oil transhipment port and petrochemical and industrial estate at Dawei on Burma’s southeast coast as a pipe dream that should be abandoned.

“The back-to-back visits last month by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to Japan, immediately followed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in [Burma], should signal once and for all that Japanese capital for Dawei development is not forthcoming. It is time to pull the plug on Dawei,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.

“The [Thai] authorities need to look for an alternative port development strategy inside Thailand.”

The multibillion dollar Dawei dream, proposed by Bangkok construction firm Italian-Thai Development, envisages a land bridge to link the Thai capital’s industrial hinterland on the Gulf of Thailand coast with the Andaman Sea and access to the Indian Ocean.

But Thitinan said logistics are lacking, human resources “challenging,” and finance non-existent, and to cap it all the sea around Dawei is not deep enough to accommodate large ships at anchorage or in port.

Resource from:

http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/36832