Stagnation in Burma (Myanmar).

My vist in March 2003 felt like a travel back in time. The placid Irrawaddy river feeds and connects the different ancient communities, the women wash in it, the children and animals play in it. On the shore, the buffalo pulls the carts overloaded with hay. The teak wood houses slumber in the shade and everywhere there are pagoda’s of solid gold, or just painted in gold, drifting by in the hot afternoon sun.

Rangoon, Shwedagan Golden Pagoda
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Life in the villages, where 70% of the population lives, seems unchanged over the last thousand years. In the un-exciting cities, the skyline is dominated by even richer pagoda’s and the streets punctuated by the orange robes of Buddhist monks, but the pace remains slow and the atmosphere strangely disconnected from the outside world.

Mandalay, student monks at lunch
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Drugs production up-country and its trade are closely guarded secrets, criticism of the corrupt but ruling military junta is politely muted and the world-famous name of the leader of the “National League for Democracy”,Suu Kyi, only reluctantly mentioned. And whatever there is of a modern economy seems barely functioning for lack of outside impulses.

And yet, this potentially very rich land has been producing and exporting oil since 1887. Since the nationalisation of the private Burma Oil Company, however, the State Oil Company has only been able to keep a modest level of exploration, production and distribution going. Nevertheless, gas exports to neighbouring Thailand started in 1998.

20th Century Burmah Oil Company offices, now standing derelict
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The development prospects for oil and gas production, both on- and off-shore, are excellent, but need larger investments and know-how, which only major international oil companies can provide. Therefore, the 100% State owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) has invited the collaboration of such companies through production sharing contracts. But a United States embargo on any collaboration with the current regime scares would-be investors away. So far only minor companies (with the exception of Total of France) have come forward. The only interested US oil company, Unocal, is in deep trouble at home. Reebok, Levi Straus and Heineken all either withdrew or shelved investment plans under pressure from US-based pressure groups. Personally, I think this only retards the progress of education and democracy in Myanmar. It is another example, after Cuba and Iraq, of embargoes hurting and isolating, not the rulers, who do very well in a climate of suspicion and hate, but the common people on whom progress towards democracy depends.