Ten years ago, the Asian Development Bank met with top officials from the region and began the massive undertaking of encouraging economic development in an area largely plagued by poverty.
The countries involved included Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and the Yunnan province of China, and relations between some—if not all—of the meeting’s participants were strained.
At that time, the ADB focused on about 100 projects for the countries—labeled Greater Mekong Subregion countries, or GMS—which would cost an estimated $40 billion over the next 25 years. The main projects included building energy stations, telecommunications, waterways and, especially, road development.
Over the following 10 years, the ADB and the GMS countries met at various times and began implementing some of the projects. Financing was pledged; road construction in all GMS countries started; agreements were signed.
A decade later, with those labors beginning to bear fruit, the ADB has planned another historic GMS summit, slated to be held Sunday in Phnom Penh.
For the first time in the GMS’ history the summit will bring leaders from the countries bordering the Mekong River to meet and discuss, among other things, the next 10 years of development in the region.
“Ultimately, I think investing in physical infrastructure is very crucial to bridge the [economic] gap between the GMS countries,” ADB President Tadao Chino said last week.
Chino spoke at the ADB head office in the Philippines—a sprawling maze of a compound in the heart of Manila.
While Chino touched upon several topics, he focused on questions related to building transportation links, a topic of great importance for the development of trade that could help bring some of the poorer GMS countries like Cambodia and Laos, he said.
“Investment in physical infrastructure is a basic requirement for economic development,” Chino said. “Among the GMS countries, a better transportation network will help create a larger network—a factory and marketing base—which could help establish production and distribution sites.
“All of these aspects will encourage economic growth and narrow the economic gap between the countries,” he said.
The transportation links covered by the GMS plan include the East-West economic corridor— a 1,600 km stretch of road connecting Danang on the coast of Vietnam to Thailand and Laos. On the other side is the North-South economic corridor, which connects Kunming, China, with Bangkok in the west and Hanoi in the North, as well as linking Bangkok with Ho Chi Minh City through Cambodia.
According to Chino, many of the highways are currently under construction “as we speak,” while some projects, such as the Poipet-Siem Reap highway, is still waiting for finance approval.
One area which is still under study, though, are the rail linkages that planners hope will cross the region. Chino said there is not yet a date when construction is expected to start.
“Railways are often more difficult than highways and need massive amounts of investment,” Chino said.
Transportation links come with a price. With better travel routes could come increases in smuggling of goods such as petroleum, cars, illegal drugs and even humans—an issue that the ADB and Mekong countries are trying to focus on, Chino said.
The ADB is providing assistance for the creation of a single-stop customs project, which will increase the efficiency of customs officials at borders. He added that there is also a move to increase the capacity of customs officials.
Whether the individual countries have the intention of implementing these programs is another issue.
Pen Simon, director of Cambodia’s customs department, declined to acknowledge that smuggling is a threat in Cambodia, saying that smuggling in the country is now decreasing.
Another ADB official, Rajat Nag, director general of the Mekong Department, said in Manila that most GMS countries are willing to crack down on smuggling.
“These countries are very keen to stop smuggling—there are vested interests because they know how much in revenues they are losing and how much they could gain,” Nag said.
It is these economic gains that has Nag most excited about the GMS programs currently in place, as well as Sunday’s summit.
“What we want to do in the next five or 10 years is build synergies with the GMS countries—we want to see countries like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam pulled up by the development of Thailand,” he said. “What we would like to see—of course this is a political issue and [needs] political will—is a border without barriers.”
Not everyone is as excited about the development of the greater Mekong subregion as Nag, Chino or other ADB officials. The international NGO Oxfam, for example, held a conference in Phnom Penh on this week to discuss—and criticize—the ADB’s development of the region.
One such critic is Violeta Corral, head of the NGO Forum on the ADB—an NGO based in Manila involving many regional partners. Corral, who spoke on Thursday in Phnom Penh, blasted the ADB’s GMS programs—particularly the road projects—for “destroying households, the natural environment and displacing people.”
One of the largest points of contention with the ADB is its lack of information sharing, Corral said, adding that “each ADB report is two hundred pages long and in English.”
She accused the ADB of ignoring the input of the local residents where the projects are being implemented.
A briefing paper issued by Oxfam also outlines, in greater detail, some of the ADB’s failings in the region.
“Over the past 10 years, the ADB has had a poor record on community participation and consultation, and recent ADB documents indicate little has changed…. Local communities have vast intimate knowledge and strong communities to ensure that their projects do not lead to a situation where sustainable development is undermined,” the briefing paper said, adding that “The economic corridors have a high risk for massive environmental damage.”
But the displacement of locals by ADB projects remains the largest issue in project planning and development.
The number of people displaced by the projects is not known, and even Corral would not try to estimate how many people have lost their homes through infrastructure upgrades.
The ADB‘s Web site estimates that 1.5 million people in Asia have been displaced through ongoing World Bank projects, but claims that accurate figures of the number of those displaced in GMS countries by ADB-funded projects is not known.
“The displacement of people by these projects is always a major concern of the ADB,” Chino said, saying that the ADB’s policy states that no one would be worse off before the project than after.
