Burma Tha Din Business roundup

Total to increase investment in response to increasing human rights violations

French oil giant Total is looking at new investment opportunities following a UN report that human rights violations against the Rohingya minority may constitute crimes against humanity.

“After six years of optimism that human rights in Myanmar would improve, we are now back to seeing the kind of human rights violations which make Myanmar an attractive place for Total to invest in,” said Total head, Patrick Pouyanné. “The establishment of a UN Fact Finding Mission in the Human Rights Council resolution was what finally convinced us that now is the right time.”

Burma Tha Din understands that Total executives were also reassured by the NLD decision not to significantly increase spending on health and education, and continued high military spending.

“The recent use in Kachin and Shan areas of the MIG jets we helped pay for demonstrates the positive contribution our investment has already made to Myanmar,” said Pouyanné. “If the government starts providing healthcare and schools it creates problems for us as we need to fund these things as part of our public relations damage control.”


Carpet bag market stagnating

Carpet bag sellers in Yangon are reporting a slowdown in sales after five years of exponential growth.

“It does appear that we have nearing saturation point in the carpet bag market”, said Maung Tin, a sales assistant at Rag and Jeans, a shop popular with foreign workers in Yangon. “Sales are steady but not rising crazily like they were. It’s still a very big market though, especially compared to five years ago.”

Burma Tha Din understands that some carpet bag merchants have responded to the slowing sales by expanding into other markets, such as prosecco wine and mac book accessories.


Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business to discontinue Pwint Thit Sa?

Rumours are circulating that the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business may discontinue its Pwint Thit Sa/Transparency in Myanmar Enterprise(TiME) reports, owing to the fact that people in Burma now have access to the internet.

An insider told Burma Tha Din, “When it was launched four years ago looking at what companies published on their websites, hardly anyone in Burma had internet access so there was little risk of upsetting any companies. That has changed now so it’s a bit more risky, even though all we do its look at the company website, rather than what the company is actually doing. The last thing we want to do is accidentally expose any wrongdoing by a company or make them look bad.”

KNU Leader Announces New 'Four Principles'

Fresh from his election victory at the KNU Congress, KNU Chairman Saw Mutu Say Poe has announced a new ‘Four Principles’ to replace the four principles of KNU founder, Saw Ba U Gyi.

The move to change the ‘Four Principles’ is a bold one, as for decades they have been a cornerstone of the ethnic Karen struggle for rights and self-determination.

A KNU insider told Burma Tha Din, “Mutu is feeling very confident now he has been re-elected and ensured his rivals and critics have no senior positions. Having got 139 votes out of the 5 million Karen people, he feels he has a mandate to do what he likes.”

Saw Mutu Say Poe’s New Four Principles are:

For me, surrender is an option
Sale of Karen State natural resources must be complete
We shall retain our petrol stations
Harn Yawnghwe shall decide our political destiny

EU to rebrand peace funds as conflict funds

In an exclusive interview with Burma Tha Din, the EU Ambassador to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Roland Cobia, revealed that the EU will rebrand its funding for the peace process as ‘conflict funding’ in light of the increase in conflict in Myanmar.

“It just looks bad if you provide tens of millions of dollars for peace and you end up with more conflict," said Cobia. “We considered momentarily whether we might be doing something wrong in the way we have gone about our peace process related funding, but that’s basically inconceivable. The chances of any of our projects in Myanmar ever receiving a genuine evaluation for effectiveness are close to zero, but just in case, we are rebranding this funding as conflict funding, and now we can unequivocally claim the funding is successful.”

Ambassador Cobia also provided an insight into why, despite tens of millions of dollars pledged to the peace process and to develop ethnic areas, internally displaced people in camps in Kachin and Shan States don’t have adequate food, shelter, medical facilities, or education for children.

“What we found with the Karen and Karenni refugees and IDPs is that if they are forced to flee their homes because of conflict or, well, I don’t usually like to use this phrase, human rights violations, and if the area they come from remains unstable and there are landmines, then they don’t want to return home. They can’t live in camps forever so you basically have to withhold and withdraw aid to force them to return home.”

Ambassador Cobia refused to be drawn on exactly how much money the EU and EU member states have spent on the peace process or what exactly the money has been spent on.

“We established the Joint Peace Fund which has been very successful if coordinating the hiring of foreign consultants, and already you can see the results with most donors now using the same phrases such as ‘complex challenges’, ‘needs to be given time’, ‘bound to be a bumpy road’, ‘bound to be setbacks but overall direction of travel is good’, ‘we have to engage and support, ‘I’m afraid we don’t have that information available’, and ‘this time I promise we really will get back to you as soon as possible with details of end recipients of our peace process funding.’

Ambassador Cobia also dismissed criticism that funding is biased towards the priorities and agenda of the government.

“It baffles me as to why ethnic people in Myanmar expect the European Union of all bodies to support any kind of devolved or local decision making. It goes against everything the EU Commission stands for. Our model is to centralise power in one place and make decisions for the regions, and this is the model we follow in Myanmar as well. We always worked with and through the central government, be it military, former military or now Aung San Suu Kyi. Our centralised approach dovetails very nicely with Aung San Suu Kyi’s approach so we work very well together.”