ASEAN Transportation by Railway
From Singapore - kuala lumpur - Bangkok - Phnom phen - ho Chi minh city - Lao Bao - Thakhek - Nakhon Phanom.
From Kunming - Mouse - Kyaukphyu
Myanmar Railway in 2012
The Future of Kyaukphyu
11 ปีที่ผ่านมา
วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 18 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556
ASEAN Transportation by Railway
From Kunming - Mouse - Kyaukphyu
Myanmar Railway in 2012
The Future of Kyaukphyu
วันพุธที่ 17 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Indonesia : Chevron staff gets two years in prison for phony environmental program.
Indonesia : Chevron staff gets two years
in prison for phony environmental program.
The panel of Jakarta graft court’s judges has sentenced Kukuh Kertasafari, employee of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) to two years in prison for his role as the head of a bioremediation team that
endorsed a series of bogus environmental programs that inflicted state losses.
endorsed a series of bogus environmental programs that inflicted state losses.
“The defendant has been found guilty of violating Law No.20/2001 on Corruption Eradication and therefore sentencing the defendant to two years in prison and Rp 100 million (U$ 10,000) in fines,” Presiding judge Sudharmawatingsih said on Wednesday.
The sentence was lighter that the five years and Rp 500 million in fines earlier sought by the prosecutors.
Judge Sudharmawatiningsih said the panel highlighted Kukuh’s failure to detect wrong doings behind the appointments of the 28 bioremediation locations that later on turned out to be uncontaminated.
However the panel saw a dissenting opinion by judge Slamet Subagyo, who insisted that the prosecutors assessment was invalid and therefore could not be used as evidence against Kukuh.
Commenting on the verdict, PT CPI spokesman Dony Indrawan said the company respected the ruling but vowed to assist Kukuh in his legal attempt to file an appeal to the higher court. He also felt assured that the company’s bioremediation projects had been exercised in full compliance with the government’s existing regulations.
Beforehand the same court had sentenced Herland Bin Ompo, director of PT Sumigita Jaya, a private contractor that had been assigned by PT CPI to six years in prison and Rp 250 million (U$25,000) in fines.
PT CPI had paid U$6.9 million to PT Sumigita Jaya to do bioremediation projects, restoring land contaminated by PT CPI’s oil. Later on, PT CPI asked the government to reimburse the payment it had made to PT Sumigita.
However, the prosecutors then found out that none of the Sumigita’s locations were contaminated by oil and therefore the prosecutors claimed that the government had reimbursed the cost for nothing.
Resource from:
by Hans Nicholas Jong, Wed, July 17 2013,
วันศุกร์ที่ 12 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Myanmar : New and Improved Airports Needed as Burma’s Tourism Grows
Myanmar : New and Improved Airports Needed as Burma’s Tourism Grows
With the winning bids for Burma’s three major new airport projects due to be announced by the end of this month, officials say the contracts are necessary, given that the government hopes to draw over 7 million tourists to the country by 2020.
The existing international airports for Rangoon and Mandalay will be upgraded, while a new international airport—expected to rival other major Southeast Asian hubs such as Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi and Singapore’s Changi in size—will be built at Hanthawaddy in Burma’s central Pegu Division, about an hour’s drive north of Rangoon, the country’s biggest city.
“The new airport will be nine times the size of the current Yangon [Rangoon] airport,” says Win Swe Tun, deputy director-general of Burma’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), part of the country’s Transport Ministry.
“The main reason to build the new airport is that the market demands,” he told The Irrawaddy. “The bid requires the winner to have the airport ready by 2018 and be able to take up to 12 million passengers a year.”
The Burmese government recently announced a tourism plan that envisages a possible 7.4 million visitors by 2020, up from just over 1 million last year, though the blueprint also acknowledges that visitor numbers could be as low as 2.81 million by that time.
If realized, the plans for an expanded tourism sector would be worth over US$10 billion per annum to Burma’s economy, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Tourism Minister Htay Aung says the mooted new airport, which will feature a double runway, is needed to attract long-haul carriers to fly direct to Burma. “Now our flight options are very limited, so we need to open the new and bigger airport at Bago [Pegu],” he said.
While new routes from Doha, Frankfurt and Seoul to Rangoon’s international airport have become available in recent years, currently most visitors to Burma from Europe and North America fly via Southeast Asia’s bigger airports, including in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which have regular long-haul intercontinental flights.
Four companies or consortia are in the final shake-up for the new Pegu airport construction project: Taisei of Japan, Vinci of France, Korea’s Incheon and Yongnam from Singapore. The winning bids will be announced by the end of July, says Win Swe Tun, along with the chosen pitches to upgrade Rangoon and Mandalay’s international airports. All the bids are being assessed by a selection board comprising Burma’s minister and deputy minister of transport along with the director-generals from the Myanmar Investment Commission and the DCA.
The Rangoon international airport upgrade contest features seven contenders, including Burmese company Pioneer Aerodrome Services, which is linked to Steven Law, a businessman described as close to Burma’s former military junta and subject to US sanctions. Another contender is the US-based ACO Investment Group, whose bid features former US government official Kurt Campbell, who visited Burma several times in his role as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and was a pivotal figure in the first Obama administration’s overtures to Burma’s reforming government.
Rangoon’s current airport is built on a former World War II British Royal Air Force base at Mingaladon, a northern suburb, and is next to a current Burmese air force base. Featuring just a single runway, the airport was designed to handle 2.7 million passengers per year but is currently running over capacity, as it handles 94 percent of international air traffic to and from the country, says managing director Win Ko.
“Last year we had 3 million [passengers], up from 2.5 million the year before,” he told The Irrawaddy. The airport last received a major upgrade in 2003, with the current international terminal built by Asia World, which is run by Law, the sanctioned businessman.
Law’s father and Asia World founder, a long-time narcotics trafficker nicknamed the “Godfather of Heroin,” Lo Hsing Han, died last weekend in Rangoon.
The main objective of the proposed Rangoon upgrade is to improve the somewhat run-down domestic terminal, says the DCA. Last year 1.1 of the 3 million passengers transiting the airport were on domestic flights, according to airport statistics.
Two companies, Mitsubishi and Vinci, which is also in for the Rangoon upgrade, are competing for the Mandalay airport job. The airport, about a 40-minute drive from the center of Burma’s second-biggest city, will be upgraded primarily to enable the facility to function as a logistics and cargo hub for central and northern Burma, positioned between the giant Indian and Chinese markets, according to Win Swe Tun.
All told, there are 41 airports across Burma, but only three are capable of handling 747-class aircraft, including the airports at Rangoon, Mandalay and the capital Naypyidaw. Seven domestic and 23 foreign carriers offer domestic and international flights.
The airport renovation and construction plans have the support of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), with spokesman Nyan Win saying that Rangoon’s international airport was too small. “For handling international flights, we need more capacity,”
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วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 11 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Myanmar: In Ngapali, Low Season Offers a Beach All One’s Own
Myanmar: In Ngapali,
Low Season Offers a Beach All One’s Own
NGAPALI, Arakan State — Ngapali Beach, a 10-kilometer stretch of stunning white sand on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in southern Arakan State, is without argument Burma’s most well-known premier beachside holiday destination.
During the dry season, Ngapali Beach transforms into a playground of resorts, from modest bungalow accommodation to luxurious health spas, offering everything from sailing, scuba diving, beach volleyball and visits to local attractions such as working elephants.
In the monsoon season, it is a quiet, peaceful place. Few visitors venture here and flights from Rangoon are reduced from several times daily to just twice a week, but this does not mean the area is not still well worth a low-season visit.
No matter the time of year, fresh seafood is a specialty of the numerous restaurants, offering succulent crab, prawn, squid and whole fish such as snapper and barracuda as regular menu items.
Should holiday-goers be looking for a break from the sun and surf, nearby Thandwe, a 20-minute drive inland on a rather heavily potholed road, is a picturesque little township straddling the Thandwe River. Thandwe provides support services to the beachfront resorts of Ngapali and is also a great destination for day trippers from the shore to take in local culture and do a little shopping.
The town is a bustling local commercial center with a modern central market and narrow streets, featuring a pleasant mix of Burmese architecture, numerous Buddhist pagodas and several beautiful mosques as ancient as the town itself.
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วันอังคารที่ 25 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2556
Myanmar : China Wants Action on SEZ in Arakan as Locals Cast Wary Eye
China Wants Action on SEZ in Arakan
as Locals Cast Wary Eye
In a visit to Naypyidaw on Monday, a senior Chinese diplomat said Beijing wanted to see “sooner implementation” of the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in western Burma’s Arakan State, as some local residents cast a wary eye on the Asian giant’s economic ambitions.
Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi, the head of the Chinese delegation, said he hoped to see development of the Kyaukphyu project soon, and that “China wants to take part in the tasks of ensuring development of the southwestern part of Myanmar,” during a meeting with President Thein Sein, according to the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
Chinese projects in Arakan State include controversial natural gas and oil pipelines from Kyaukphyu to China’s Yunnan province. Construction of the dual pipelines, known as the Shwe gas project, is complete, and the piping of gas and oil northward is scheduled to begin soon. Oil storage tanks on Maday Island and natural gas storage tanks on Mala Island have also been installed.
Thein Sein on Monday said he “thanks China for the Kyaukphyu industrial zone project” and expressed hope that the “region could see development” as a result, but there were no details provided on the nature of the agreement nor what kind of support the Chinese would provide.
Local residents said there were no indications that development of the SEZ in Kyaukphyu had yet begun, nor had the local population been briefed about plans for the project.
In December, Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein—the chairman of the SEZ Implementation Committee—paid a weeklong visit to Kyaukphyu and told residents at a meeting there that the project would be implemented in accordance with the desires of the local people.
“Kyaukphyu is a center of Chinese interest, so they will want to begin it sooner and quicker,” said Aye Zan, secretary of the Kyaukphyu SEZ Monitoring Committee, which was formed earlier this year after local residents called for collaboration on the project in terms of social and environmental impact assessments.
“But the authorities have not shared any plan with us,” he added.
The government has invited foreign firms to invest in the SEZ project, but there remains a lack of basic infrastructure, such as roads, electricity provision and port facilities, in the area.
“No development at the project area is seen, we only know that the ‘master plan’ for the project has been drawn up in collaboration with a Japanese company,” said Hla Myo Kyaw, a resident of Kyaukphyu and a member of the Kyaukphyu SEZ Monitoring Committee.
The residents said basic information about the SEZ—the project site, the size of the zone and whether local residents would need to be relocated—had not yet been provided to them.
A delegation of the Arakan State-based Rakhine Nationalities Development Party was among a group of Burmese political parties that visited China in April at the invitation of the External Communication Department of the Chinese Communist Party. It was not clear whether Beijing’s ambitions in Kyaukphyu were discussed.
Some locals are wary of Chinese-backed projects in Arakan State, with the Shwe gas project criticized by many for a lack of transparency and its negative environmental and social impacts, including forced displacements and harm to local fishermen’s livelihoods.
The monitoring committee said it would stand with local residents and air any concerns raised.
“If the villagers have to move for the project, it cannot happen,” Hla Myo Kyaw said, “as no one will accept relocation from their homes.”
In December 2012, the rights group Arakan Oil Watch reported that the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group would manage the implementation of the Kyaukphyu SEZ on Ramree Island, where more than 200,000 people reside.
The report said the zone would require an initial investment of US$8.3 billion and a total of $89.2 billion over 35 years, using 120-square-km of land and 70-square-km of waterways, according to a feasibility study by CITIC Construction.
An 800-km long rail way connecting Kyaukphyu to Ruili in China’s Yunnan province will also reportedly soon be built, with its planned completion in 2015. The railway will pass through cities and villages in Arakan State, Magway and Mandalay divisions, and Shan State, as the Shwe gas and oil pipelines currently do.
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วันอาทิตย์ที่ 23 มิถุนายน พ.ศ. 2556
Xinjiang-Gwadar Port: China for fast work on economic corridor
Xinjiang-Gwadar Port:
China for fast work on economic corridor
Ambassador of China Sun Weidong has stressed on quickly developing an economic corridor from Xinjiang to Gwadar Port to make Pakistan an economically vibrant state.
“Both friends—China and Pakistan are making plans for setting up a task force for the purpose,” he told Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Wednesday, according to an official statement.
Referring to the Chinese premier’s recent visit, the ambassador said that Pakistan was one of the first countries he visited. He also said that the Chinese government expects a visit from the Pakistani prime minister soon.
Ambassador Weidong also expressed the desire to open new areas of corporation between the two countries. He said that Pakistan has always supported China in its crucial issues such as Taiwan, South China Sea, Tibet and Xingjian.
He also admired Pakistani support in both regional and international forums.
Condemning the recent incidents in Quetta, the ambassador said that his government was against any incident that destabilises Pakistan. He highlighted support to Pakistan in economy, infrastructure development, energy, people to people contact and security.
Chaudhry Nisar stressed the need for Chinese collaboration for economic development.
He said the new government’s priorities were development, fighting terrorism and issue of sovereignty which has been threatened by the drone strikes.
He acknowledged that the Gwadar Port would change the strategic and economic importance of the entire region.
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China-Pakistan deal on economic corridor passing through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir[PoK]
China-Pakistan deal on economic corridor passing through [PoK]
To link Xinjiang to the port of Gwadar on Arabian Sea
China has indicated it will go ahead with building infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) despite India’s concerns, signing a memorandum of understanding with Pakistan on a transport corridor expected to pass through the disputed region.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who on Thursday wrapped up a two-day visit to Pakistan following his trip to India, called on both countries to “start formulating a long-term plan for the China-Pakistan economic corridor project and gradually push forward its construction”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Both countries signed an MoU to cooperate on a “long-term” plan on the corridor, among 11 agreements announced during Mr. Li’s visit.
Chinese planners have called for a transport and economic corridor to link China’s far-western Xinjiang region to the port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, which China helped build and is now managing.
The corridor, they hope, will speed up development in Xinjiang, which has seen intermittent unrest, and also open up a new route for China’s energy imports from West Asia. The corridor will pass through PoK, which borders Xinjiang and provides the only feasible transport link between China and Pakistan.
While India has made its concerns known over the projects considering the region’s disputed status, China has appeared to push forward. China would “step up” its cooperation with Pakistan by “building the oil pipeline and railroads linking the countries”, Wang Dehua, a South Asia scholar at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told The Global Times, a Communist Party-run tabloid known for its nationalistic views, on Thursday.
Last year, both countries completed a pre-feasibility study for a railway line linking Kashgar, in Xinjiang, to Havelian, running through the Khunjerab Pass and PoK.
Asked about India’s concerns, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said on Thursday, “China’s position on the Kashmir issue is clear and consistent”.
“We hope India and Pakistan can solve the relevant issue through dialogue,” he said.
Chinese officials have made a similar argument to their Indian counterparts when pressed about the projects.
While Mr. Hong did not further elaborate China’s stand, officials had, in the past, described their projects as being carried out “without prejudice” to disputes between India and Pakistan. The projects, they said, were purely commercial, with China not deviating from its stated position of “neutrality” on the issue.
India has rejected that argument, pointing out that China had itself expressed strong opposition to Indian cooperation with Vietnam on exploration projects in the waters of the South China Sea, which are contested by China and a number of other countries.
The Global Times in an editorial on Thursday said India “must accept and adapt” to the friendship between China and Pakistan as Beijing “cannot scale down this relationship” to address its concerns.
“India has long been sensitive to the Sino-Pakistan relationship, even suspecting that China secretly helped Pakistan master nuclear technology. These suspicions are groundless but cannot easily be dispelled,” the editorial said.
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