NEW DELHI: Lonely Planet describes Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s Rakhine State, as a city that “sits in an incredible spot where the wide, tidal Kaladan river kisses the big, fat Bay of Bengal.”
The Sittwe deep water port is part of the ambitious Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project to link the Indian mainland to the northeastern states through Myanmar. But first an update on the Sittwe port.
Located in western Myanmar, it will provide a direct link to Kolkata port 540 km away, and also Visakhapatnam port which is a little over 1,000 km on the southern Indian mainland. Extensively upgraded with Indian assistance and with an Indian operator to run it, Sittwe is expected to open for shipping by March next year, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
The integrated port and inland waterways terminal at Sittwe has been ready since 2018, built at a cost of $70 million. In January 2019, India’s Minister of State for Shipping Mansukh Mandaviya confirmed in the the Rajya Sabha, that infrastructure at Sittwe Port was ready. But there’s a hitch. India needs to ink a coastal shipping agreement with Myanmar, a process which is now underway.
It is the Kaladan project which is taking more attention. When completed, it will link Sittwe port to Paletwa in Myanmar’s Chin state via the Kaladan river, a distance of 158-km. An Indian company has already provided the necessary infrastructure to operate smaller vessels on the river including embarkation and disembarkation points. From Paletwa a highway running for 109-km will enter India’s northeastern state of Mizoram at Zorinpui (see map). Work on this stretch has posed serious challenges in terms of terrain, weather (monsoons), security and delays on the part of the Myanmar government. The alignment of the road was also changed, adding to the delay. Security is another issue given the clashes between the Myanmar army and the Arakan army of Rohingya insurgents.
In 2015, the Indian government revised the cost estimate for the project to $396 million, which is being provided to Myanmar as a grant. Funding for the Kaladan project comes from a $1.4 bn budget that India has allocated for Myanmar as a key element of the ‘Act East’ policy. This project was reviewed during Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit to Myanmar last week (as was the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway; another sea-land route to the northeast is the Kolkata-Chattogram (Bangladesh)-Tripura link)
The Kaladan project will help reduce India’s dependence on the Siliguri corridor, the narrow neck of highway running through the state of West Bengal to Assam, which is currently the main access to the northeastern states.
“The aim is to give India’s northeast as much access to the sea as possible,” said an official, pointing out that “The Kaladan project will open up another business and trade route from Kolkata to Sittwe. Moreover, India’s development portfolio is people-centric and the project will bring benefits to the local population in Myanmar.”
So while the operationalisation of Sittwe port is expected to boost India-Myanmar bilateral trade from the current $1.5 billion, the full potential will be realised only after complete connectivity through the Kaladan leg is achieved. Yet, the mood is upbeat. Sittwe gives India a much-needed toe-hold in the region’s maritime domain even as it competes with China for geo-strategic influence in Myanmar and in the larger Indian Ocean region.
Ironically, Sittwe sits on the same stretch of western Myanmar where China is developing the deep-water Kyaukpyu port further south. Beijing hopes Kyakpyu will be an alternative to the Malacca Straits chokepoint. Kyakpyu, also in Rakhine state, is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, giving Beijing a strategic presence in the Bay of Bengal.
[/vc_column][/vc_row][/tdc_zone]
