ITD allowing business operators to book space at Dawei project

BANGKOK, August 8 (TNA) - Italian-Thai Development Public Co, Ltd (ITD) is allowing business operators to book space for their businesses to be set up at Myanmar’s Dawei Special Economic Zone at the cost of 3 million baht per rai (0.4 acre), said ITD president Premchai Karnasuta. ITD and its business partners have signed approvals for the first phase of contract for Dawei Special Economic Zone with the Myanmar’s committee to develop public utility within the industrial estate totaling 27 square kilometres while the company also received special rights to develop an additional 8 square kilometres, said Mr Premchai. In total, there will be about 16,000 rai (6,400 acres) for sale while development in the area will take about eight years and investment is estimated at 1.7 billion US dollars, he said. Lending sources will mostly come from local financial institutions and under the first phase about 300,000 jobs will be created, said Mr Premchai. Under the first phase, public utilities will cover 700 rai (280 acres) in 2015 and 2016 and they will be expanded to 3,000 rai (1,200 acres) in 2017, he said. Mr Premchai said many Thai and foreign businessmen have expressed interests in booking the space within the special economic zone and his company expects to earn approximately 10 billion baht. Two traffic lanes of road with the total distance of 140 kilometres linking between the Dawei Special Economic Zone and the Thai border in Kanchanaburi province will be constructed, he said. The Myanmar government will extend loan amounting 4.5 billion baht for the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal which will start operations in 2018. Major oil companies including PTT and Shell are expected to become its customers, said Mr Premchai. He said the Japanese government has expressed interest in investing on full phase of the development programme and is expected to compete with ITD, which still need about three years for study before deciding to join in an auction. Mr Premchai said he expected it would need about 6 billion US dollars for an investment while concession period would last 75 years for the full phase project. (TNA)