Myanmar-India ties head for new high

11:03, March 07, 2006

Xinhua

Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is due to start a three-day official visit to Myanmar on Wednesday to push relations between the two countries to a new high.  At the invitation of Chairman of the Myanmar State Peace and Development Council Senior-General Than Shwe, Kalam will be the first Indian head of state coming to Myanmar in decades.  Observers here believe that relations between Myanmar and India have been warming up rapidly since late 1990s.  Indian Vice-President B.S. Shekhawat visited Yangon in 2003, while Than Shwe toured India in 2004. These visits have paved way for increased political, economic and cultural cooperation between the two countries.

During Than Shwe's New Delhi visit, three memorandums of understanding were signed, of which the cooperation in non-traditional security issues stressed that both sides were committed to jointly combat terrorist activities in the border region and Myanmar reiterated that it would not allow insurgent activities against India from its soil. Over the period from 1997 to 2003, India extended to Myanmar 50 million U.S. dollar credit for industrial development under the economic and technological cooperation. In July 2004, a memorandum of understanding was generated on India's provision of a line of credit worth over 56 million dollars for upgrading Myanmar's rail transportation.

India has invested 4.5 million U.S. dollars in Myanmar so far since 1999. Its bilateral trade including the border trade with Myanmar amounted to 425.82 million dollars in the fiscal year 2004-05, Myanmar statistics show. Of the total, Myanmar's exports to India stood at 341.89 million dollars, while its imports from India took 83.93 million. India stands as Myanmar's 4th largest trading partner after Thailand, China and Singapore and also Myanmar's second largest export market after Thailand, absorbing 25 percent of its total exports, figures indicate.

Meanwhile, India is considering investing in building a border road later this year directly linking the country's Mizoram state with Falam, northern Myanmar's Chin state. The two countries have also been cooperating in the energy sector, with India's the ONGC Videsh Ltd and GAIL of India working in partnership with South Korea's Daewoo International and South Korean Gas Corporation in offshore gas exploitation at two blocks in western Rakhine state. Negotiation over a pipeline project for India to import gas from areas to India's West Bengal state is underway.

Myanmar, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that stands in location linking South Asia and Southeast Asia, has become a gateway for India to the ASEAN. The two countries are also partners cooperating in BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand-Economic Cooperation) and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. Since introducing its "look-east" policy, India has reiterated that the Southeast Asia region is one of the stressing areas of India's diplomacy and that India seeks to establish political, economic and security ties with ASEAN. In regional cooperation in the infrastructural sector, India is also involved in a 1,400-kilometer trilateral highway network project linking India, Myanmar and Thailand. India, along with Thailand, will fund the 800-million-dollar project, including India's loan aid for establishing an optical fiber telecommunication network along the highway. In the military exchange, Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy Admiral Arun Prakash visited Yangon in January this year following calls of two Indian warships at the Yangon Port last December.

The calls formed part of India's efforts to forge closer ties with maritime nations including Myanmar in the Indian Ocean region. Observers here believe that as long as India pushes forward its "look east" policy and the process of regional economic integration continues, the bilateral ties between Myanmar and India in various fields will be further enhanced.