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.