Business (January 2010)
covering burma and southeast asia
Friday, March 29, 2024
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Business (January 2010)


By THE IRRAWADDY JANUARY, 2010 - VOLUME 18 NO.1


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Chrysler Ad Backs Freedom for Suu Kyi

Photo: www.yourfaceforfreedom.org

Chrysler has launched a new ad for its flagship 300 sedan that ties the company to a worldwide human rights campaign to free detained Burmese democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. The 30-second TV ad features Nobel Prize winners Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and Muhammad Yunus stepping out of black Chrysler 300 vehicles at the 10th summit of Nobel laureates in Berlin. The final vehicle, a white Chrysler, is empty, symbolizing the absence of Suu Kyi. The Chrysler marketing campaign also includes an opportunity for visitors to the Chrysler Web site to replace their Facebook profile photo with a picture of Suu Kyi. Observers suggested that the ad, launched in Europe and the US, is a bold move from an industry struggling to regain widespread public support after a difficult year of bankruptcies and bailouts.

Gas Pipeline to India Still Negotiable, Says Burma’s Ambassador

India and Burma are still discussing the idea of building a gas pipeline between the two countries. The subject resurfaced at a meeting in Kolkata between the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Burma’s ambassador to India, Kyi Thein. A pipeline could be constructed in two to three years time, if Indian companies currently carrying out exploration work succeed in finding commercial quantities of gas, said Kyi Thein, quoted in Indian media. The two countries parleyed over a pipeline for several years before the Burmese military government’s Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise rejected India’s bid to buy gas from the giant Shwe offshore field. Annual trade between the two countries is expected to increase to a value of US $1 billion for the first time during the current financial year, Kyi Thein told the Indian chamber meeting.

Burma’s Largest Hydropower Plant Nears Completion

The construction of Burma’s largest hydropower plant, Yeywa, located near the central city of Mandalay, is nearing completion. The 790-megawatt capacity plant, which has been under construction since 2004 and has reportedly cost more than US $600 million to build, should raise Burma’s electricity generating capacity by more than 40 percent. However, with so much Chinese involvement—including investment of about $200 million—some of the power might be exported to China’s Yunnan Province, observers believe. Burma has an electricity generating capacity of just 1,700 megawatts for a population of around 50 million. In comparison, neighboring Thailand has about 30,000 megawatts for a population of about 60 million people. More than 25 percent of the electricity generated in Burma is lost in transmission and distribution through poor cable equipment, according to figures published in a report by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

EU’s Burma Sanctions Policy Stalls

The European Union’s economic sanctions policy on Burma is in “disarray” as the huge trading bloc stalls on decisions in the wake of a softening of US views, says a former senior British envoy. EU sanctions since the monk-led protests of September 2007 have succeeded only in “diverting timber, precious metals and gems away from the European market to China, Thailand and other regional countries,” said Derek Tonkin, the chairman of the human rights group Network Myanmar and a former British ambassador to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Some EU member countries want to review and maybe ease sanctions, but the issue was sidestepped at a recent meeting of the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

Hold on Thai Industrial Projects Could Stop Burma Gas Flow

The virtual shutdown of Thailand’s main petrochemicals industrial zone near Bangkok could affect exports of Burmese gas. Some of the gas from Burma’s Yadana and Yetana offshore fields in the Gulf of Martaban is piped to the Map Ta Phut industrial estate in Rayong, south of Bangkok. Most of the processing factories at the complex and new development have been shut down indefinitely by Thailand’s top court pending a health and safety investigation. Doctors and environmental groups say that many local people are suffering from serious illnesses due to chemical pollution from Map Ta Phut.



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