Investors departing Myanmar as criticism ups

Investors departing Myanmar as criticism ups

Pascale Trouillaud, Agence-France Presse, Thechaung, Myanmar

Lawsuits facing French and U.S. oil firms Total and Unocal over their involvement in Myanmar's Yadana gas pipeline have called into question the role of foreign companies in this pariah state.

Total, the world's fourth largest oil group, says it wants to stay in Myanmar as long as the "reasonably profitable" gas reserves of the Yadana field last -- an estimated 30 years.

Unocal, Total's partner in the project which stands accused of serious human rights violations, has also reiterated its firm intention to remain in the military-run country.

Myanmar, which is struggling under mounting Western sanctions, has in recent years also been hit by the withdrawal of big Western companies, mostly from the United States and Britain, who have fled for ethical reasons.

The most recent to pull out was PricewaterhouseCoopers, the US-based international network of accountancy firms, which said last week it was withdrawing amid concerns over the country's human rights record.

It followed on the heels of other heavyweights such as Texaco, PepsiCo, Coca Cola and Levi Strauss from the United States, British American Tobacco, Ericsson from Sweden, the French group Accor and Swiss company Triumph International.

Human rights activists who lobby actively for firms to withdraw from Myanmar argue foreign investors help prop up one the harshest military regimes in the world and enable its ruling generals to enrich themselves.

Citing "confidentiality clauses", Total refuses to give any indication of how much money Myanmar is making from Yadana through its 15 percent stake in the project via the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) and through royalties and taxes.

But the effects of disinvestment by foreign groups in Myanmar is debatable.

"Whether we leave or stay changes nothing for the state of Myanmar," says Total's Paris-based head of its Myanmar mission Jean du Rusquec, speaking recently to a small group of journalists at the pipeline site.

Asian companies have swooped in to fill the gaps left by the departing Western firms.

The 60 percent BAT stake in a Myanmar cigarette maker has been bought by a Singaporean company, and British Premier Oil's stake in the Yetagun gas field -- adjacent to Yadana -- was snapped up by Malaysia's Petronas.

Says Morten Pedersen, research scholar at the Australian National University: "A disinvestment by Total would strictly change nothing."

Experts point to recent cases where Asian companies taking over formerly Western business have immediately cut salaries by half, curtailed social benefits for the Myanmar workforce and even laid off employees.

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections but has never been allowed to rule, herself has recently softened her pro-sanction stance.

And she has even said that if the pro-democracy opposition comes to power, it would not challenge the Yadana contract as it had said it would in the mid-90s.