CPI ဥကၠ႒ မစၥတာ လူက်ိရူိ (ဓာတ္ပံု - Bloomberg News)
ျမန္မာသမၼတ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ဟာ ျမစ္ဆံုဆည္ စီမံကိန္းကို သူ႔အစိုးရသက္တမ္း ၅ ႏွစ္တာ ကာလအတြင္း ဆိုင္းငံ့မယ္လို႔ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့့ ေသာၾကာေန႔က လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ မေၾကညာမီ မိမိတို႔ ကုမၸဏီအား တစံုတရာအေၾကာင္းၾကားျခင္း လံုးဝမျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့လို႔ အင္မတန္ အံ့အားသင့္ခဲ့ရေၾကာင္း China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) ဥကၠ႒ မစၥတာ လူက်ိရူိ (Lu Qizhou) က တရုတ္ႏုိင္ငံပိုင္ China Daily သတင္းစာႀကီးကို မေန႔က ေျပာၾကားလိုက္ပါတယ္။
CPI ဟာ ျမစ္ဆံုစီမံကိန္းမွာ ေဒၚလာ သန္းေထာင္ခ်ိီ ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံထားတဲ့ တ႐ုတ္အစိုးရပိုင္ ကုမၸဏီ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ယခုႏွစ္ ေဖေဖာ္ဝါရီလမွာ သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ယခင္စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ဝန္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ ျမစ္ဆံုစီမံကိန္းကို လာေရာက္ၾကည့္႐ႈစဥ္က စီမံကိန္ကို အရွိန္ျမွင့္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔ ေျပာၾကားခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ႕ ဆံုးျဖစ္ခ်က္ဟာ အင္မတန္ နားမလည္ႏုိင္စရာေကာင္းေၾကာင္းလည္း မစၥတာ လူက်ိရူိက ေျပာပါတယ္။
၂၀၀၆ ခုႏွစ္က CPI နဲ႔ ျမန္မာအစိုးရရဲ႕ လွ်ပ္စစ္ဝန္ၾကီးဌာန အမွတ္ (၁)၊ ေအးရွားေဝါလ္ကုမၸဏီတို႔ စာခ်ဳပ္ခ်ဳပ္ဆိုျပီး အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ သန္း ၃၆၀၀ ကုန္က်မယ့္ ျမစ္ဆံုစီမံကိန္းအပါအဝင္ ေမခ မလိချမစ္ေပၚရွိ ေရအားလွ်ပ္စစ္ဆည္ ၇ ခု အတြက္ ရင္းႏွီးျမဳပ္ႏွံမႈ ပမာဏ စုစုေပါင္း အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာဘီလီယံ ၂၀ ေလာက္ရွိပါတယ္။
ဒီစီမံကိန္းေတြအတြက္ ေငြအလံုးအရင္း ျမွဳပ္ႏွံထားတာေၾကာင့္ စီမံကိန္းကို ဆက္လက္ျပီး သတ္မွတ္ကာလအတိုင္း ဆက္လက္လုပ္ေဆာင္ႏိုင္ဖို႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ေၾကာင္း၊ စီမံကိန္းကို ရပ္တန္႔လိုက္ပါက "တရုတ္ျပည္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာျပည္" ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံလံုး မေဖာ္ျပႏိုင္ေလာက္ေအာင္ ဆံုးရူံးမႈမ်ား ၾကံဳေတြ႔ရမည္ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ျမန္မာအစိုးရဖက္က စီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ေခ်းေငြ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္မ်ားအရ ပိုက္ဆံမ်ားလည္း ရယူထားျပီးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ ယခုလို ရပ္တန္႔လိုက္ျခင္းအတြက္ ျမန္မာဘက္မွ ဥပေဒေၾကာင္းအရ ျပႆနာမ်ားရင္ဆိုင္ရႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း မစၥတာလူက်ိရူိက ေျပာထားပါတယ္။
သူက စီမံကိန္းနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ သဘာပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ဆိုင္ရာ ျပႆနာေတြဟာ ေဝဖန္သေလာက္ တကယ္မရွိေၾကာင္း၊ ျမစ္ဆုံဆည္ၾကီး ေပၚထြက္လာရင္ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ ျမစ္ၾကီးနားျမိဳ႕ၾကီးေတာင္ ေရးၾကီးတဲ့အႏၲရာယ္ကေန ပိုကာကြယ္ႏိုင္လာမွာျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဆို္ပါတယ္။
သတင္းအျပည့္အစုံ
CPI: Mutually Beneficial and Double WinningChina-Myanmar Myitsone Hydropower Project
On September 30, some media reported that the Myanmar government will suspend theconstruction of Myitsone Hydropower Project in upstream Ayeyawady River, which causedextensive attention from media both home and abroad. With many questions, we interviewedMr. Lu Qizhou, President of China Power Investment Corporation.
Q: President Lu, lately we noticed in the media that the Myanmar government will suspend theon-going Myitsone Hydropower Project. As China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) is themain investor of this project, can you tell the public what really happened?
A: I also learnt about this through the media and I was totally astonished. Before this, theMyanmar side never communicated with us in any way about the "suspension". Ever since CPIand Myanmar Ministry of Electric Power No. 1 "MOEP (1)" signed the MOU in December 2006,CPI has always followed the principle of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win result andestablished a Joint Venture with the Myanmar side, strictly observed the Chinese and Myanmarlaws and regulations, diligently fulfilled our duties and obligations, and proceeded according tothe operation mode of international BOT project. In March 2009, the Chinese and Myanmargovernments signed the Framework Agreement on Joint Development of HydropowerResources in Myanmar, explicitly supporting CPI in developing the upstream-Ayeyawadyhydropower project.
We hired topnotch hydropower design institutes, research institutes, consultancies andauthoritative experts in China to carry out planning, design, specific study, consultation andsupervision for the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project. Changjiang Institute of Survey,Planning, Design and Research is responsible for the planning of upstream-Ayeyawady basinand the design of Myitsone Hydropower Project. It is also the institute that designed China'sThree Georges Project. When we proceeded with Myitsone Hydropower Project, technicaldocuments were consulted and reviewed by authoritative organizations and experts, andpassed review organized by MOEP (1). Therefore, all legal documents, including theapplication for approval, signing of Joint Venture agreement, business license of the JointVenture, investment permit, concession rights and legal opinion of the Judge are all in strictcompliance with procedures of Myanmar. So far, all legal supporting documents for MyitsoneHydropower Station are complete for both countries. This is to say that the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project including Myitsone Hydropower Station, for which CPI isresponsible for development and construction, is a major project approved by Myanmargovernment and has strictly performed all legal procedures in China and Myanmar. In Februarythis year, Myanmar's Prime Minister urged us to accelerate the construction when he inspectedthe project site, so the sudden proposal of suspension now is very bewildering. If suspensionmeans construction halt, then it will lead to a series of legal issues.
Q: How did CPI participate in the construction and development of Myitsone Hydropower Stationin the first place? What's the status quo of the project? If the project is suspended, whatimpacts will be caused?
A: Hydropower is the technologically most proven and most economic renewable energy today.The average development of hydropower in developed countries is already above 60%, 72% inAmerica, 67% in Japan, 90% in France, 95% in Italy and over 60% in Norway. Hydropowerdevelopment rate reaches 50% in China now, and is planned to reach about 75% in 2020. Witha total hydropower resource of over 100GW, Myanmar is one of the few countries in the worldthat have abundant hydropower resources, but the current rate of development and utilizationis only 2.45%, which is in extreme disproportion to the resources it possesses. In particular, asthe upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project is located near the China-Myanmar border,developing hydropower resources here not only can meet Myanmar's power demand forindustrialization, but also can provide clean energy for China. It is based on this considerationthat we decided to invest in this mutually beneficial and double winning hydropower project.
Myitsone Hydropower Station that people are concerned about is the largest station in the riverbasin and started construction in December 2009. Currently, resettlement in the dam area ofMyitsone Hydropower Station has completed, site preparations (access road construction,water supply, electricity supply, communication and site leveling) have started on full scale, on-site facilities including access road, water treatment plant and oil warehouse have takenprimary form, the cross-river bridge downstream of the dam is under construction, andexcavation for the main spillway and diversion system has also begun.
Since the inauguration of the Myitsone Hydropower Project, huge sum of money has beeninvested. If the project were suspended, the loss would go far beyond direct investment andfinancial expenses. There would also be tremendous amount of default claims from contractors,serious inability of electricity generation of the Construction Power Plant, huge increase ofbasic investment spread to other cascade power stations, and so on. As a result, the goal ofcompleting the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project in time will not be achieved, causingimmeasurable losses to both China and Myanmar. At the beginning of this year, Myanmar andChina reached an agreement and relevant banks of both countries signed a RMB loanagreement. To guarantee repayment, the Myanmar government has secured its shares inMyitsone Hydropower Station and taken its expectant revenues as the main source for loanrepayment. If the construction of Myitsone Hydropower Station were suspended, that wouldseriously impact the implementation of loan agreement.
In my opinion, having undergone sufficient scientific proving and fulfilled stringent legalprocedures of both countries, Myitsone Hydropower Station is sure to withstand the test ofhistory. I strongly hope that with unremitting efforts of relevant parties, this project can smoothlymove forward on schedule, and mutual benefit and win-win result will become a reality for Chinaand Myanmar.
Q: Some reports pointed out that the project will only bring economic benefits for China. What'syour comment on that?
A: This viewpoint is extremely wrong. People who hold such a wrong viewpoint either don'tunderstand the situation or have ulterior motives. Regarding infrastructure, it is an internationalpractice to implement BOT mode. According to our BOT agreement, upon completion of theupstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project, CPI will be responsible for operation for 50 years,after 50 years the project will be transferred to the Myanmar government free of charge.
Either in terms of direct economic benefit or indirect profit, the upstream-Ayeyawadyhydropower project will significantly boost the fast development of economy and society inMyanmar. In terms of direct economic benefit, when the several hydropower stations inupstream-Ayeyawady basin, including Myitsone Hydropower Station, are completed, Myanmargovernment will gain economic benefits of USD54 billion via taxation, free electricity and sharedividends, far more than CPI's return on investment during our operation period. In particular,as the design life of the project is over 100 years, when we transfer it after 50-year operation,the Myanmar government will have a fixed assets increase worth tens of billions US dollars, inaddition to hundreds of billions US dollars of direct economic benefits. Of course, the premise isthat US dollar is not depreciated.
In terms of indirect profits, first of all, the construction and operation of high-grade and large-capacity power station will rapidly improve the power equipment in Myanmar and cultivate alarge group of professionals in power construction, operation and management. As a result,Myanmar's electric industry will realize leapfrog development, providing strong powerensurance for its economic and social development. Second, when Myitsone HydropowerStation is completed, it will effectively control and reduce the flood peak, raise the anti-floodingstandard in downstream area, and reduce life and property losses caused by downstream floodon people living on both banks. The anti-flood capability of Myitkina will be enhanced from oncein 5 years to once in 20 years. Third, 750km road and a large number of hydrological,meteorological and seismic observation stations will be built for upstream-Ayeyawady projectaccordingly. Those infrastructures will definitely create opportunities for the local area to attractbusiness and capital and improve people's livelihood. Fourth, during the construction peak,more than 40,000 workers will be needed, considerably increasing local job opportunities. Atpresent, there are altogether 2000 Myanmar workers on the construction site of upstream-Ayeyawady project, including 1400 Myanmar workers on the Myitsone Hydropower Project site.By directly participating in the construction of upstream-Ayeyawady project or providingrelevant services for construction personnel, local residents have considerably improved theirown economic and living conditions.
Q: Some people worry that construction of the dam will lead to such major hazards as flood andearthquake. Is there sufficient guarantee for dam safety?
A: As far as I know, in the more than 100-year history of hydropower development, no flood ordestructive earthquake has ever been caused by dam construction. CPI is a responsible super-large energy enterprise with 18GW operating hydropower capacity in China. We are able toensure the safety of dam construction. During the design and construction of MyitsoneHydropower Station, we involved topnotch experts and teams in China, who have designedmore than 200 hydropower stations, including Shuibuya Hydropower Station with the world'shighest concrete face rockfill dam and Malaysia's Bakun Hydropower Station. Repeated provingof the seismic safety evaluation of Myitsone proved the absolute safety and reliability of theproject engineering scheme. The Myanmar government also organized famous consultingorganizations and experts from Switzerland and Japan to prove that over and over. Both partiesagreed that there was no seismic safety issue for Myitsone Hydropower Station.
The seismic design of the dam in Myitsone Hydropower Station follows the standard offortification intensity 9, which is higher than fortification intensity 7 of Zipingbu HydropowerStation that has withstood the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan. To further fortify the overallseismic performance of the dam, we applied reinforced concrete grating to the top ofdownstream dam slope and implemented other seismic fortifying measures. In case ofemergency, the surface and middle discharge orifices on the spillway can be used to rapidlylower the reservoir water level and ensure dam and downstream safety. We will build 25 digitalremote control seismic monitoring stations in the reservoir area and arrange more than 700safety monitoring instruments all over the dam in accordance with the safety monitoringstandard applied to the world's highest concrete face rockfill dam so as to keep a close eye onthe dam's working conditions during operation.
The anti-flood standard of the Myitsone dam is designed as once in 1000 years and ratifiedwith once in 10000 years to ensure safe operation.
Q: Environmental protection has been a hot topic in hydropower development. Few westernNGOs criticized that the project would seriously damage the environment. How do you respondon this?
A: I would like to ask: Did these organizations ever help Myanmar to develop economy when theMyanmar people were in most difficult situation? But now, with the slogan of ‘protecting thebenefits of the Myanmar people', these organizations are disturbing the Myanmar governmentto carry out economic project development to improve people's livelihood. I don't know whattheir real purposes are?!
Any human activity would cause some impacts on the environment, including power generatingactivities. Hydropower, thermal power, nuclear power, wind power and solar power generationwould all impact the environment somehow. Striving to reduce the negative impacts caused byhuman activities on the environment is necessary for sustainable development. During the 100years that the mankind develop hydropower, their awareness of environmental protection hasbeen deepening, and their ability in that has also continuously improved with technologicalprogress. It has become a common consensus that hydropower is the only renewable energysuitable for large-scale development now.
The Hoover Hydropower Station in America has been operating for 80 years now. It not onlyturns 700,000-hectare desert in western America into fertile farmland by providing reliablewater source, but also creates the new city of Las Vegas. The Itaipu hydropower station jointlydeveloped by Brazil and Paraguay has also played a significant role in the economic and socialdevelopment of both countries. CPI's successful development of cascade hydropower stationsin upstream Yellow River has not only provided a great deal of economic and reliable cleanenergies, but also ensured non-stop flow in the middle and lower reaches of Yellow River forthe past 10 years. All these projects have impacted local environment in varying degrees, buttheir positive effects on local economic and social development is self-evident and indisputable.
CPI attaches great importance to environmental issues during project development, and startedenvironmental impact assessment at the very beginning of project planning.
Regarding vegetation, we entrusted over 100 experts from China and Myanmar to conductenvironmental impact assessment of the basin, some of them from Myanmar NGOs. Accordingto site investigations, native vegetation only accounts for a small part in the flooded area, andthe flooded land only accounts for 1.4% of the whole basin area. Besides, protected plants thatare flooded are widely distributed outside of the reservoir area, so bio-diversity will not beimpacted.
Regarding intrusion of seawater, after the reservoir begins storing water, average flow will bereduced by 3.5% in flood season and increased by 16% in dry season. Therefore, there is nopossibility of seawater intrusion during flood season. Meanwhile, it can also help preventseawater intrusion during the dry season. It is also good for navigation, flood control andirrigation in the downstream.
Q: Resettlement is also a hot topic in hydropower development. Resettlement work relatesdirectly to the subsequent living quality of the migrants. What have you done in that regard?
A:The Myanmar government attaches significant importance to resettlement for the upstream-Ayeyawady hydropower project, and has effectively led and organized the planning, design andimplementation of resettlement. They solicited migrants' opinions for several times regardingtype of houses and subsidies for relocation, and eventually selected 2 resettlement locationswith convenient traffic, good environment and favorable terrain for migrants from the Myitsonedam area. According to the agreement, we assisted in the resettlement work and proactivelyfulfilled our social responsibilities and obligations, while fully respecting local religion, ethniccustoms and the wish of migrants.
The basin that upstream-Ayeyawady project is located features a typical terrain of highmountains and river valley. When the power stations are completed, flooded area onlyaccounts for 1.4% of the whole basin area, and less than 20000 people have to be relocatedbecause of the cascade hydropower stations in the basin.
There are 5 villages in the dam area of Myitsone Hydropower Station, totaling 2146 people of410 households. The houses we provided for migrants are 2-storey wood-and-brick structure,and we provided each household with 100,000-Kyat living subsidy, a 21-inch color TV andother living necessities. We also reasonably subsidized migrants for their private orchids andeconomic forests. Compensations for the dam area amounted to billions of Myanmar Kyat andwere all distributed into migrants' hands. In order to ensure the subsequent lives of migrants,we newly reclaimed 440 acres of land, and distributed money to every household for landleveling related expenses, rice for a year, 30 kilo rice seeds and 50 kilo fertilizers. At the sametime, all infrastructures such as schools and hospitals are concrete structure, and all studentsare provided with textbooks, uniforms and stationery. Auxiliary facilities including high-standardreligious venues, police stations, firefighting and administration buildings, post offices andmarkets are set up, 20km concrete road is built, and steady water and electricity is supplied forcommunities. Resettlement has been completed now, and living standard of the migrants hasbeen greatly improved compared with before, so they are satisfied with their current livingconditions.
We will fully draw on our experience in resettlement of dam area for the resettlement inMyitsone reservoir area to make it more rational and feasible. Flooded roads and bridges in thereservoir area will be rebuilt on the principle of "equal or superior to former standard" so as tomeet the traffic requirements of local residents.
We also attach great importance to long-term assistance to the migrants. We have set aboutplanning and building animal breeding and vegetable growing bases in the basin, hire localpeople to provide logistic services for project construction, with the aim to create more andbetter jobs and ensure the sustainable development of migrants.
There are two old sayings in China. One is "seeing is believing" and the other "he is wise who isopen to all opinions, but a fool who only believes what he wants". I believe all of you will come toa just and objective conclusion with awareness of the real situation.
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