Bkk Post - Businessmen eyeing Burma

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Subject: Bkk Post - Businessmen eyeing Burma as location

Bangkok Post - Sep 1, 1999.
LABOUR SHORTAGE

Tak firms to discuss plan to relocate
Businessmen eyeing Burma as location
Supamart Kasem

Entrepreneurs from Tak will today meet the Burmese ambassador in Bangkok for
talks on the feasibility of relocating their industrial plants to Burma in
the wake of labour shortage.

Panithi Tangphati, Tak's Chamber of Commerce chairman, said deputy
director-general of the Foreign Trade Department Pitsanu Rianmahasarn will
lead entrepreneurs and industrialists to meet Ambassador U Hla Maung in
Bangkok today to seek information about Rangoon's investment policies.

The move followed last week's seminar on border trade problems in which many
participants agreed to consider a proposal to relocate factories from Tak to
Myawaddy to ensure the availability of raw materials and Burmese labour.

After the seminar, the participants inspected a 10,000-acre plot marked as
Burma's border economic zone in Yi Poo, a village in Myawaddy, about 5km
from the border.

Mr Pitsanu, who chaired the seminar, said local Burmese officials would help
Thai entrepreneurs with the relocation of factories from Thai border areas
to the new economic zone.

"Should the Burmese policies and conditions prove favourable, Thai
entrepreneurs would be ready to move there. This will enable Thai factories
to find ample raw materials and labour.

Planning to relocate include furniture, jewellery, garment and leather goods
industries," the deputy director-general added.

The industrial factory relocation plan is in line with the Thai-Burmese
industrial co-operation programme along the Mae
Sot-Myawaddy-Moulmein-Rangoon route.

According to Mr Pitsanu, the Chuan government has a policy to target a 4%
growth in exports and plans to boost exports to regional markets amid the
dwindling orders from erstwhile major export markets like the United States,
Japan and Europe.

In another development, Somphop Thirasarn, secretary-general of
Kanchanaburi's industrial council, said Rangoon had agreed to allow the
private sector to set up job placement companies to find overseas jobs for
Burmese and ethnic Mon.