“Europe has strong experience in implementation of poverty-alleviation projects and offers a lucrative market for [Burma’s] exports of timber, oil and gas, textiles, seafood, gemstones and manufactured goods,” it said.
However, poor infrastructure such as transport and low productivity in an agricultural sector which still employs two-thirds of the working population present formidable problems to resolve, said report authors Patricia Diaz and Shada Islam.
Asean Offers no Model for Burma on Rule of Law
Burma can expect little guidance from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), which it will chair in 2014, as it embarks on major political and economic reforms, claims a regional legal expert.
“There is a disturbing lack of interest, or self-delusion, about the absence of the rule of law regionally,” said Barry Wain, of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
“Despite the adoption of a charter by Asean, the rule of law in the grouping is still more aspiration and ideal than reality,” he wrote for a conference on the rule of law.
“Since its founding in 1967, Asean has preferred what has become known as the ‘Asean Way’—informality and loose arrangements rather than treaties and formal agreements, consensus and dependence on personal relations among leaders, ministers and officials.”
Years after the Asean Charter was agreed in 2007, giving the organization a legal character, barely half of all economic agreements between the ten member countries have been implemented.
Burma Needs Experts to Build Two New Airports
Burma’s main airport in Rangoon will be inadequate to handle the growing volume of passenger traffic within two years, according to Civil Aviation Department Deputy Director Win Swe Tun.
He said a new international airport was needed and a site north of Rangoon at Hantharwaddy is being considered. Burma would also need an airport in the Tavoy area in the southeast to cater for the planned special economic zone development there.
Win Swe Tun said the government would welcome foreign investment and technical help in achieving the proposed new airports because “companies here have little experience in construction work for aviation projects.”