Connecting Mekong region with India through infrastructure linkages
Prabir De
Posted online: Tuesday , February 05, 2008 at 2330 hrs (Financial Express)
Mekong countries have undertaken programmes to strengthen their economic linkages with India while fostering peace, facilitating sustainable growth, and improving living standards in the process. In particular, the Mekong region is working towards improving connectivity through strengthening linkages in transport, energy and telecommunication.
The Mekong region comprising Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam cover an area of enormous wealth and natural resources. Their vision is to create a more integrated, prosperous and equitable region, complementing national efforts to promote economic growth and reduce poverty, and augmenting domestic development opportunities to create regional opportunities.
The Mekong-Ganga Cooperation (MGC) was established in 2000 at Vientiane at the government level. It comprises six member-countries namely, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and India. The emphases are on four areas of cooperation, which are tourism, culture, education and transportation linkage in order to be the solid foundation for future trade and investment cooperation in the region.
MGC provides special focus on overland connectivity. Under the MGC, there is a proposal to set-up a railway line from Delhi to Hanoi, for which RITES Ltd, a government of India undertaking that offers consultancy in the fields of transport, infrastructure and related technologies—has already completed a preliminary study in 2006. Opening of the second ‘Friendship Bridge’ connecting the town of Savannakhet in Lao PDR with Mukdahan in Thailand has made it possible to travel by road from anywhere in India right up to Danang in Vietnam through Mekong’s East-West Economic Corridor. India has already proposed to extend BIMSTEC highway (India–Myanmar–Thailand trilateral highway) to Lao PDR and Cambodia.
India offers 10 scholarships every year to MGC member countries in culture-related subjects, such as ancient history of MGC countries and Buddhism, Sanskrit, Pali, dance, preservation of manuscripts, archaeology, handicrafts and museology.
India continues its support for the MGC initiative. With the help of India’s Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), the India–Cambodia and India–Vietnam Entrepreneurship Development Centres became operational recently. The India–Lao Centre has been operational since November 2004. EDI has done a splendid job in fostering the India–Mekong cooperation. In Mekong, India’s economic relationship with Vietnam is taking a new shape. The last three-and-a-half decades saw the development of a strong, multifaceted and fruitful development of bilateral relations between India and Vietnam. India has been assisting Vietnam in education, training, science and technology, and many other fields for a long time.
Bilateral trade between India and Vietnam is still small, but there is a high potential of increased trade between the two countries. India and Vietnam are targeting the bilateral trade of over $ 2 billion by 2010. There exists immense potential for enhanced cooperation in areas like information technology, biotechnology, science and technology, and space research. In recent years, trade and investment relations between the two countries have also been improved.
The two-way trade has increased considerably from $ 697 million in 2005 to more than $ 1.6 billion in 2007. By the end of 2007, India has 18 effective FDI projects in Vietnam with a registered capital of $ 46.4 million, ranking 34th in 73 countries and territories investing in Vietnam. Several Indian companies like ONGC and Ranbaxy have been investing in Vietnam. In 2007, India’s ESSAR Group and RPG, to name a few, have shown interest to set up manufacturing facilities in Vietnam.
The growing India–Vietnam partnership is a part of growing India-Mekong cooperation that is gaining momentum. There are immense opportunities for ‘win-win’ opportunities for the countries associated with it.
India always attaches special attention to the Cambodia–Lao PDR–Myanmar–Vietnam (CLMV) countries among the ten Asean countries, and is committed to assisting them to bridge the gap with the other six.
One of the major activities of the India-Asean cooperation is to strengthen the capacity of CLMV countries in fields like entrepreneurship development, English language training and IT cooperation, among others. There are some projects initiated by India on CLMV countries such as Entrepreneurship Development Centres, Centres for English Language Training (CELT), e-Network Project–establishing VSAT-based tele-education and tele-medicine project, among others.
Meanwhile, the Mekong Cross-Border Transport Agreement (CBTA) offers useful lessons to India and other South Asian countries while setting in place a regional transit arrangement in South Asia. The India–Mekong cooperation is likely to generate investments and technology transfers between them and sharing of development experiences. This will ultimately strengthen supply capacities in Mekong countries and also keep up South–South solidarity.
India’s FDI is rising in Mekong region. The foremost requirement, therefore, would be to strengthen transport connectivity between India and the Mekong countries. Till date, there is no flight operating between India, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam. In contrast, China has daily flights with these three countries. We should have to direct flight between Mumbai and Hanoi.
India also needs to intensify the overland linkages with the Mekong region. For example, following Asian Highway alignment, the BIMSTEC highway that links India with Thailand through Myanmar, should be linked with Mekong East–West Economic Corridors, which runs from Myanmar coast to Vietnam coast. Once this is done, it will enhance the possibility of setting up special economic zones at borders—India-Myanmar and Myanmar—Thailand. Being land-linked, India’s NER can serve as a ‘hub’ for trade between Mekong and India.
—The author is fellow, RIS, New Delhi, Email: prabirde@ris.org.in . Views expressed by the author are personal.
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Connecting-Mekong-region-with-India-through-infrastructure-linkages/269478/
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