Burmese Language
World Bank, IMF to enter Burma: US
The US will “agree to and support” assessment missions to Burma by the World Bank and IMF as one of a number of rewards for recent reforms offered by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her meeting with President Thein Sein yesterday.
The international lenders could now “begin studying the needs here”, she reportedly told the Burmese leader in Naypyidaw. US sanctions on Burma currently prohibit Washington’s support for lending and technical assistance to Burma by the likes of the World Bank and IMF.
The World Bank ceased its operations in the country in July 1987, and since 1998 Burma was considered unable to pay back its debts to the Bank. The IMF however still carried out annual trips to the country but has not provided any assistance.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) would most likely also be included among financial institutions able to re-enter Burma. ADB has not provided new finance since 1986 and Burma stopped “servicing” ADB loans in January 1998.
Following the meeting yesterday, a US official said of the IMF: “They’ve had some people here, but the United States has not in the past supported a full, comprehensive assessment of needs, and we are now prepared to do that.”
Secretary Clinton says an end to sanctions on Burma not yet on the horizon
The most common use for loans from such institutions is for large scale infrastructure projects, of which many analysts suggest Burma badly needs. The country’s debt burden is growing, and according to the US State Department it currently stands in the region of $US9 billion, with around $US4.7 billion owed to Japan alone.
Infrastructure projects have been put on hold, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, because of budget shortfalls. Burmese economist Khin Maung Nyo believes this to include projects like the trans-Asia highway.
The World Bank has historically been the world’s largest financier for big dams, currently funding an average of four per year globally. Somewhat ironically, this has included dams in China, which has been the biggest player in the Burmese hydropower sector. According to the Guardian newspaper, the World Bank’s portfolio of dams stands at around $US11 billion, with a 50 percent increase in financing since 1997.
The ADB meanwhile is financing dam construction on the Mekong in neighbouring Laos and other regional rivers. The ADB announced last month that they were providing $US465 million for a at 440 MW dam on the Nam Ngum River in northern Laos, one that would be slightly smaller than the proposed Myitsone Dam in northern Burma. Like Myitsone, the majority of the dam’s energy would be destined for a neighbouring country, in this case Thailand.
The Financial Times asserted that the exploratory missions in Burma by the two financial institutions would be “one of the first steps towards lending programmes” and that “analysts say the Obama administration has some room to increase engagement and technical assistance before it must seek the permission of Congress”.
Clinton also said the US would loosen restrictions to UN Development Program (UNDP) funding in the country, “particularly in the area of health and microfinance”.
Burma is in dire need of both, with the current government making no commitments to increase its health spending beyond the 0.9 percent of its annual budget, which equates to about $US1 per person, per year. In comparison, neighbouring China spends roughly $US66 per person each year.
Clinton also said that the US would resume counter-narcotics programmes in Burma, with a US official noting in September that the country’s narcotics industry would grow in importance.
US anti-drug efforts in the country that historically have been carried through with the help of the CIA continued until 2004 when Prime Minister Khin Nyunt was purged, according to former Burmese intelligence officer, Aung Lynn Htut.
In the past they have included the supply of equipment such as Antelope helicopters to the Burmese military, but such measures made little difference to Burma’s narcotics’ output.
Tags: burma, china, hillary clinton, hydropower, imf, myanmar, world bank
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This is just what Burma needs the IMF and the World Bank. The same organizations that helped run Africa into the ground. These groups should be banned from Burma on Humanitarian grounds.
It’s all very well that Burmese are desperate for money as most of the money from previous deals and theft are in the pockets of small clique of military and non-military circle and spent on killing machines for use against own people. People working as slaves in other countries under constant fear would like to come back as well.
But the IMF and ADB plans are not designed to help Burma at all. It is simply to prepare Burma for use as a prop for the rampant consumerism of China and Asia which will further enrich the multi-national conglomerates rather like Clinton got more political kudos by associating with global pin-up girl Aung San Suu Kyi rather than the other way round.
The most important thing in Burma is to keep the simple, happy life without fear rather than to copy Bangkok and Singapore for the shining things, by selling out the whole rivers and other assets as the military is doing and the whole exile communities and Rangoonites are calling for. (People asked for stopping of the Myitsone dam but not the others about 10 are in progress right at the moment.)
After all, nobody, NLD or other, has gone to the people and ask ( and more importantly listen to) real people of Burma 70% of which live in the places the people airing these plans have never been to. The self-appointed representatives of the people themselves do not go and canvass the idea and ask them. They simply assume what the people should have and even tell the people what to think or do this or that in “democracy”, etc. More keen to “educate them” than be educated as should be the way.
In democracy, whoever wants to represent the people listens, not the other way round as is currently practised around the world.
Do majority Burmese really want the trans-Asian road? What sort of corruptive forces would come along that way? Or dams and dams until the rivers become strangulated, stagnant, stinking pollution for electricity for iPads? Do the majority land owners o f 5-10 acre…
Do the majority land owners of 5-10 acre want to go landless and homeless to live in evil slums to form millions of acres of mechanised farms owned by a few including the family of the pretentiously titled “Lower House Speaker”?
All very well to get money from lenders, but only on the people’s term, only if people really desire rather than to have to be grateful to them for screwing us. That’s DOUBLESCREW.
US can give any amount of money to anyone. After all, they can print unlimited amount of US currency as they wish. Both US and China are hypocrites. Woe to both of them.
Sorry I have entered the comment in a wrong page. Anyway, it is bound to come any kind of US backed organizations to Myanmar because now US is trying to use Myanmar to counter-act China.
commentators obsessed with diabolical ideas of pessimist view on Burma often hanged their useless comments underneath every articles which is so sickkening for others to read.
Be strong and get out of your sunken pit. I hope Hillary Clinton visit to Burma will bear better fruit than rotten apples from crazy Burmese exiles.
Laos dam’s profit money are or might be for its own people although there is a communist Vietnam influences so Burmese are the poorest compared to Laos. US’s support(UNDP) and IMF finance will all go to than shwe, thein sein and USDP to beat DASSK in next election. All the foreign loan must be paid back by ordinary Burmese citizen from generation to generation. Than shwe’s money is not for country. So, we , Burmese knows how to live poorly instead of having more debts from others.Than shwe has learned from corrupted Chinese officials how to steal the donation and loan from other countries, esp IMF, UNDP( see Chinese cases). We all agree that all donation and loan should be under the care and management of DASSK and ethnics’ leaders if provided. Russian descent arm dealer will visit Burma very soon so “than shwe” needs more money to buy more arms, tanks and jets to kill all of us, especially ethnics.
Please , check carefully if the H Clinton’s donated money goes into the military thugs pockets for USDP. Thank you again H Clinton for your generosity for the poorest Burmese. If your(H Clinton) next donation goes to the raped ethnics’ victims committed by than shwe’s thugs, you are the forever most beautiful lady in the world.
I am really hard to understand that the US will help to the Burmese Government immediately. It is meaningless to help the unreal democractice country from the US or UN or IMF. If the helps go into there , the civilian loose the real lives and the rights.
“Be strong” is indeed the message everybody in Burma and of Burma but currently outside should bear.
Be strong enough to discard the wishful thinking that all of a sudden Thein Sein felt like doing good deeds.
But Aung San Suu Kyi said she believed him and unthinking millions who blindly follow her went along with that.
Current situation is simply a phase where the military, while maintaining FULL control, see more benefit in “relaxing” the appearance to entice more fools and open more doors.
How does gorging the eyes out and cutting the tongue of innocent villagers prove that Thein Sein is good? He wanted to annihilate the Kachin in one day. Only he is impotent. It is more likely that Kachin will finish him first. And yet he is “Reformed” in some fool’s imagination.
Where is Aung San Suu Kyi when there is now ample opportunity to demonstrate against the inhumane atrocities?
IMF and ADB are designed to process countries for exploitation by multinational companies who fund these institutions via their respective governments.
Hillary Clinton is paid by the United States tax payers. The only person she would selflessly help is her daughter, Chelsea and rightly so.
Hillary Clinton and EVERYTHING that relates to her is EVIL. In name of Freedom, Democracy and Peace she wants to suck common Burmese Peoples blood. I’m not pessimistic, it’s TRUE.