Naypyidaw: A Dusty Work in Progress
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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Naypyidaw: A Dusty Work in Progress


By Clive Parker OCTOBER, 2006 - VOLUME 14 NO.10


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(Page 6 of 7)

In the absence of cash payments from the government for its building contracts, Max Myanmar earns handsome revenues from such market restrictions.

 

At the beginning of 2005, Max Myanmar was also awarded joint development of a 5,000-acre rubber plantation with the army in Karen State, as reported in The New Light of Myanmar. The project immediately sparked controversy after the Karen Human Rights Group alleged that the site in Thaton township was taken by force from local villagers who have reportedly not been paid any compensation and have subsequently been denied access to the land.

 

Air Bagan, owned by Htoo Trading chief Tay Za, became the first private airline to offer service to Pyinmana’s Ela Airport o­n March 1. Other companies not involved in construction in Naypyidaw—including Air Mandalay—were permitted to fly to the new capital two weeks later. The big contractors have also been awarded lucrative vehicle import licenses, a Rangoon-based businessman said, which can bring profits of up to $100,000 per license for second-hand imports.

 

Whether Burma can sustain its current policy of borrowing to fund the building of Naypyidaw until it is finished remains an open question, according to the EIU’s Richards. “There may be a short-term boost to economic growth from this construction activity, but over the long term the impact will be negative,” he says, citing the scale of Burma’s domestic and overseas debt.

 

History is not o­n Burma’s side, in this respect. Capital relocations have proven disastrous for some economies. In Brazil’s case, shifting its administrative center led to such acute budget and inflationary problems that the country’s military seized power four years after the new capital Brasilia was inaugurated.

 

In Naypyidaw, there may not be talk of a coup, but residents’ discontent is as evident as their confusion about why the move was necessary in the first place. The civil servants and laborers who toil each day in the dust and despair that shrouds the new capital give little or no importance to the government’s construction timetables or cost projections. Being uprooted from their families and homes by force is all that concerns them.

 

 “The question of timing… is less important than the question of whether or not it [the shift to a new capital] is necessary at all,” political scientist Schatz points out.



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