Potential projects in ASEAN identified
Potential projects in ASEAN identified
MANILA (AFP): A study financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has proposed 121 possible projects to be undertaken within the recently formed East Asean Growth Area (EAGA), officials said yesterday.
The project proposals were contained in the study put together by the Hong Kong-based GHK Ltd. consultancy firm using a 1.8- million-dollar ADB grant. No cost estimates for the projects were given.
EAGA, which comprises Brunei, the Philippines' southern island of Mindanao, and eastern provinces in Indonesia and Malaysia, was officially launched last year in the southern Philippine city of Davao to promote lagging trade and investment in those provinces.
Officials from these four countries, the ADB and GHK held a two-day meeting which ended Friday for a "mid-term" review of the study.
It is expected to be completed by April 1996 before it is submitted to governments for approval.
ADB economist Ernesto Pernia said the projects would be in the fields of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, energy and power, trade and investment and tourism, among others.
One of the proposals is a project to connect the power grids of the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, Malaysia's Sarawak and Brunei with the help of both the private sector and the government, Pernia told a news conference.
Other suggestions included joint fisheries development in the countries' common waters -- considered as among the richest fishing grounds in the region -- as well as the elimination of travel taxes to allow free movement, he said.
Intra-EAGA flights between Mindanao and Manado in Indonesia began earlier this month.
ADB officials said that the projects would take two years at the least and over five years at the most to be implemented.
Pernia said that some of the projects are already on stream but did not identify them.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a whole groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.