Myanmar's bilateral engagement with India in trade has gained momentum since 2008 when political and economic reforms were launched in the former 'pariah' state. India-Myanmar trade has more than doubled in the last seven years and has crossed $2 billion in 2013-14,
Analysis
Myanmar’s bilateral engagement with India in trade has gained momentum since 2008 when political and economic reforms were launched in the former ’pariah’ state. India-Myanmar trade has more than doubled in the last seven years and has crossed $2 billion in 2013-14, but much remains to be done, as India is Myanmar’s distant 11th trade partner.
The 5th India-Myanmar Joint Trade Committee meeting held on 17 February in Myanmar’s capital city aimed at intensifying economic cooperation between the two countries. The meeting was co-chaired by Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman, who announced that bilateral trade will reach $10 billion in next five years and Indian investments in Myanmar would cross $2 billion mark.
In order to achieve this trade target, two routes — maritime and border trade — assume significance. Ever since India launched its Look East Policy, Myanmar’s importance as a strategic and economic partner has been important and trade and connectivity projects were initiated with an objective of achieving regional prosperity.
Border trade
Myanmar is India’s land-bridge to South-East Asia. Sharing a 1,700-km border, the immense potential of border trade potential between was rightly identified by the Look East Policy. However, the only operational border trading post has been the Moreh-Tamu post, off the border in Manipur state in India.
Trade between India and Myanmar through the border trade points of Moreh and Zokhawthar in 2012-13 was only $ 6.5 million. However, the informal trade that takes place across the border is several times higher. Large unregulated informal trade, fraught with security, health and safety risks have remained as challenges to border trade.
Myanmar exports 25 percent and imports 15 percent of its total trade through the border from India. Border trade with India comprises of only 1 percent of Myanmar’s total border trade. India accounts for a sizeable share in Myanmar’s imports of pharmaceutical products (37 percent), essential oil, perfumes, and cosmetics (6.6 percent), rubber and articles (6.2 percent), articles of iron or steel (5.6 percent), cotton (5.6 percent), and iron and steel (5.5 percent).
The Indian commerce and industry minister during her visit to Manipur earlier this year had said that her government is keen on trade and plantation projects in the region as part of the Special Economic Zone in the state. Sitharaman in the bilateral meeting in Nay Pyi Taw underlined the need for improving border trade by offering Myanmar, banking arrangements suited for border trade.
Maritime trade
Trade through sea is another way of intensifying economic cooperation between the two countries. Rightly, discussed in the Joint Trade Committee Meeting was India’s assistance for subsidized direct shipping links to Myanmar. Potential of maritime trade with Myanmar cannot be overlooked since South-East Asian economies- Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, have become important trade destinations.
The Kaladan Multimodal Transport Project (KMMTP) that connects Kolkata port with Sittwe port presents such an opportunity. Also important would be the Chennai port for sea links with ports of Yangon and Dawei, the latter is being developed by Thai companies into a Special Economic Zone. Hence, it is no coincidence that the next round of Indo-Myanmar Joint Trade Committee Meeting scheduled to take place in Chennai.
Maritime trade, however bypasses the North-Eastern region of India, and development of this region has been an imperative of the Look East Policy, hence skepticism exists for over-reliance on maritime trade to boost economic cooperation between the two countries. Undoubtedly, maritime trade is high in returns and presents lower security risks compared to border trade.
Indian investments
India is 12th on the list of investors in Myanmar with a cumulative investment of US $ 1.89 billion from 1989 to 2012. Foreign direct investment in Myanmar hit US$6 billion in the first 9 months of the current fiscal year 2014-15.
India’s engineering sector is eyeing the Myanmar market to create a bigger presence for engineering exports, and oil and gas companies ONGC Videsh and GAIL are aggressively scouting for more exploratory blocks in Myanmar. Infrastructure development is another area where India is engaging with Myanmar and is expected to continue to do so.
The new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) law in Myanmar allows 100 percent FDI in textiles, 80 percent in food and beverages and production and distribution of fruits and vegetables. These two sectors in which India can intensify investment, especially for food and beverages production the thinly populated North-East states could be ideal, because of the ready availability of land.
The opportunity that Myanmar presents for Indian companies is immense, but without identifying the sectors for increased engagement, the efforts would be in vain. This must be the logic behind Sitharaman’s invitation to the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry to India in April for showcasing Myanmar’s economy to attract Indian investments.
(The writer is a Research Assistant at Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata)
Sri Lanka: TN position and NPC resolution can delay refugees’ return
N Sathiya Moorthy
Independent of the enthusiasm shown by the Governments of India and Sri Lanka for the early return of the over 100,000 Tamil refugees in southern Tamil Nadu to their homeland across the Palk Strait, there could be delays of the unexpected kind. The position taken by the host Tamil Nadu Government and the ’genocide’ resolution passed by the Tamils-exclusive Northern Provincial Council (NPC) recently has the potential to discourage expectant returnees to have a re-think.
Any refugee returnee issue of the kind is fraught with inherent political, social and administrative problems, both fathomable and otherwise. Considering that the Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka have spent a substantial part of their growing-up years in Tamil Nadu, they will have inherent apprehensions in re-locating to a land that they almost/utmost unfamiliar and at times uncomfortable with.
For starters, the refugees will require assurances on rehabilitation, for them to be able to start their off their from where they had left in the host-State, despite all the other inconveniences, even if not from where they had left it before the ’ethnic war’ intervened and destroyed much of what they have had. Given the long and numerous stories of inevitable unemployment and joblessness flowing from across the Strait, they would also be concerned about family incomes, to feed themselves all and for providing education and healthcare for their children and the needy, respectively.
The youth among them, who may have been born and/or married while in the Indian camps, may not know the Sri Lanka of their earlier generation and might even feel like ’outsiders’. Some may be disturbed by a feeling of ’guilt’, and others too apprehensive about possible taunting by their brethren back home. The central theme in this case would that be that they had settled safely in a secure environs far away from the war-zones, leaving the rest to fight and die in the war that was not exclusively theirs. Yet, their incessant yearning to return home cannot be wished away, either.
Even in the best of times, the Sri Lankan State and the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist polity in the island-nation would have apprehensions about the wholesale return of the Tamil refugees from India in particular, and those from across the world, otherwise. Apart from the 100,000-plus refugees in India, a guesstimated 200,000 of them, mainly those whose applications for asylum may be, or may have been, rejected are said to be spread across the western world.
The mid-year report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for 2014 puts the number of ’people of concern’ from Sri Lanka at 181,645. Official More than a third of this figure comprises refugees in Indian camps, going by domestic Government figures. Incidentally, another 35,000 or so Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka live outside the camp in India, either on their own, or with relatives and friends.
No throwing out
India is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention. Nor does it have a refugee law, on the lines proposed. Yet, to refugees from across all borders abutting the country, India has been doing more than what is internationally expected or prescribed. It’s both acknowledged and appreciated, both by the individuals concerned and the international community.
There is no culture, politics or functional legal framework for India to either throw them all out, or not accept them, or hold them hostage in the mid-seas or land-borders, as has been the case with many countries that are signatories to the UN convention and pride themselves to be having a prescription law for the protection of refugees. Indian and Indians do not know to ask their ’guests’ – however intrusive and destructive – to get out. Nor do they know the why and how of throwing them out.
Even without refugees, Indian immigration laws are lax in formulation and lazy in enforcement. Of course, unlike many other countries, particularly in the western hemisphere, India does not make politics out of granting ’political-asylum’ to every other person demanding it at one stage, and denying them the same when it may have become uncomfortable nearer home. It’s choosy and conservative in granting ’political asylum’, if at all. The last big name to be granted political asylum in India was the Dalai Lama. That was decades ago.
It’s thus that local political groups have often suggested/demanded that willing refugees be granted Indian citizenship without second thoughts – though the politics and processes of it may be more complex than elsewhere, too. In the case of Sri Lanka’s Tamil refugees, the DMK party in Tamil Nadu had suggested the same, but the response of the refugees themselves was muted, if not discouraging.
Help & concerns
Despite ignorance and impressions to the contrary, Sri Lankan Government agencies, particularly those in south India, have been doing a commendable job, to make things as comfortable as possible for the refugees. However, their efforts have often been stymied by pan-Tamil protestors in the State, who manhandled Sri Lankan officials, operating out of Tamil Nadu Government offices in the district headquarters, with police protection.
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