The just-ended 50th annual Myanmar Gems Emporium has fetched 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, a record sale of gems and jade over the past few years, local media reported Saturday.
The sale picked up from the last annual event when it experienced a slumping business with proceeds of merely 702.66 million U.S. dollars.
The Myanmar government plans to renegotiate billions of dollars of natural resource deals as it imposes tougher environmental standards and clamps down on corruption, a leading US think tank said Monday.
The country's powerful military and Chinese firms could be most affected by the move as the government pursues a radical reform agenda, turning away from decades of junta rule, according to the Asia Society.
The Chinese financiers of the suspended Myitsone Dam project, China Power Investment Cooperation (CPI), have told local Kachin residents that they will restart the mega-dam project in 2015, according to the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) and relocated villagers from Aung Myin Thar, near the dam site.
Talk of Myanmar’s burgeoning natural resource industry has been simmering for sometime and many of the world’s largest oil and gas firms have been waiting to get a slice of this promised land since trade restrictions were lifted more than a year ago.
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) is looking to build a U$3.2 billion coal-fired power plant in Dawei, according to a report in Bernama.
According to the EGAT governor, the proposed plant will produce 1,800 megawatts of electricity and Thailand will be able to buy the excess power.
Activists, Buddhist monks and farmers who were charged for protesting against the Latpadaung copper mine in Sagaing region will be included on a new list of political activists alongside those who are considered political prisoners, according to Nyo Tun, a member of the Myanmar government’s Political Prisoners Scrutiny Committee.
