Business (May - June 2009)

India’s Tata Group Looks at Truck Factory in Burma

ravi Kant, managing director of Tata motors, poses next to the company's new pickup truck model "Xenon" at the 29th Bangkok International mot or show in mar ch 2008. (Photo: AFP)

India’s industrial giant Tata is interested in building a truck factory in Burma. Executives from the vehicle manufacturer met with military government officials to put forward proposals, reports India’s Business Standard newspaper. Tata made headlines in March by starting production of the Nano, the world’s cheapest mass-produced car, at US $2,000. Business Standard said the aim in Burma is to build heavy trucks and a components manufacturing facility. The deal reportedly would be backed by a $20 million line of credit from the Indian government. Tata is privately owned.

Oil Firms Face ‘High Cost’ to Image by Operating in Burma

Foreign oil companies considering doing business in Burma should factor in the “high cost” to their reputations when they calculate the risks, said the human rights group EarthRights International (ERI). The group cited human rights abuses by the military regime—including land confiscation, forced labor, rape and torture—associated with the construction of land pipelines from the offshore Yadana gas field to Thailand. Oil companies should understand, said ERI, that programs of so-called corporate social responsibility inside Burma will always be flawed because of the involvement of the military regime.

Australian Firm Quits Naypyidaw Airport Project

A leading Australian company has cancelled a contract involving one of its subsidiaries in the development of an airport in the Burmese capital of Naypyidaw, after news reports named Singapore-based CPG, owned by Sydney-based Downer EDI, as a designer of the airport. The company announced it was severing CPG’s links with Burma’s regime-friendly Asia World conglomerate because it contravened its “zero harm environment” policy. Under Australian government sanctions, it is illegal for Australian firms to do business with Asia World. According to the airport construction industry Web site passengerterminaltoday.com, the airport is to be built in three stages and is designed to eventually handle more than 10 million passengers per year.

Asia Urged to Rethink Growth Policies

The Asian Development Bank, at its annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in early May, warned that 61 million people will remain trapped in extreme poverty this year because of the global economic slump. That figure could increase to nearly 160 million if slow growth continues next year, it said. The bank urged regional governments to spend more on social safety nets and to reduce their reliance on export-driven growth as they grapple with the economic meltdown. Some governments in Asia—Japan and China among them—are already flooding their economies with hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending, but it is too early to say whether the pump priming is working, while many other governments in the region are too poor to fund such largesse.

State-owned United Bank of India to Work with Burmese Banks

The state-owned United Bank of India will work with Burmese banks to provide banking facilities to help improve cross-border trade, said India’s ambassador to Burma, Alok Sen. The inter-bank cooperation is one of several measures taken to improve trade, which suffers from “certain operational problems.” Alok Sen visited border areas between the two countries to survey problems afflicting commerce, said India’s Sangai Express newspaper. Indian media said Sen spent a week in the Indian state of Mizoram examining relevant issues, including plans to improve a river transport project on the Kaladan waterway to the Burmese port of Sittwe.

Burma to Benefit from China Aid Package

Burma is one of three countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to benefit from a Chinese financial package designed to restart regional growth in the wake of the global economic slump.