Economic planners in India and Thailand are hoping that Burma’s chairmanship of Asean starting in a few months’ time will reignite interest by the Naypyidaw government in the long-stalled “trilateral highway” to link the three countries.
The highway has been on the agenda for 15 years. The Indian government spent US$30 million building 100 miles (160 km) of new road from the India-Burma border at Moreh-Tamu across Sagaing Division in 2001, but it still ends in dust and mud in the middle of nowhere.
A new appeal to the Burmese government to get on with the project was made at the Asean summit in Brunei last week, where Burma was formally awarded the 2014 chairmanship of the 10-country bloc.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra urged Burma’s President Thein Sein to help achieve a 2016 target date proposed by New Delhi and Bangkok for final completion of the trilateral highway.
Yingluck made a similar appeal when she and India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in May to discuss trade links.
“Billions [of US dollars] could be saved on shipping if an easy overland route was developed from Southeast Asia to India and more westerly nations,” the US business magazine Forbes commented earlier this year in a report on the economic opening up of Burma. But the magazine also reported how India’s $30 million investment in road construction in Sagaing still ends in dust and riverbed mud.
Read more: With Burma as Asean Leader, Hopes for India’s Stalled ‘Look East’ Highway