"After months of negotiations and failed promises, a proposed multi-billion dollar Myanmar port and special economic zone that could transform Southeast Asian trade appears back on track. Thai banks aim to keep the project afloat with short-term loans until an expected Japanese loan of up to $3.2 billion can be secured, officials and sources famliar with negotiations told Reuters. Thailand?s largest construction firm, Italian-Thai Development Pcl, signed a deal in 2010 to build a deep-sea port and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in southern Myanmar?s coastal Dawei into Southeast Asia?s largest industrial complex. But the project foundered, as the Thai builder failed to secure $8.5 billion to finance construction of its first phase -- roads, utilities and a port. Underlining Dawei?s strategic importance, Japan and Thailand have since intervened to rescue the project. "Italian-Thai has had difficulty in mobilizing the funding. So now the Thai government has effectively taken over the project," Thaung Lwin, chairman of the Dawei SEZ told Reuters. "The next step is to invite Japan", which he said is committed to seeing the project succeed. Since the Thai and Myanmar governments agreed on July 23 to connect Dawei to the Thai port of Laem Chabang, 100 km southeast of Bangkok, Thai banks led by Bangkok Bank and Siam Commercial Bank have arranged a 10 billion baht ($325 million) bridge loan to sustain it for another 8-10 months, Somjet Thinaphong, managing director of the Dawei Development Co, an Ital-Thai unit, told Reuters in an interview...Just months ago, the project was nearly left for dead, a casualty of simmering local resentment and fragile financial backing. About 30,000 people, mostly impoverished rice, cashew and rubber farmers living in thatch-roof huts, are slated to be moved during 10 years of planned construction. In the Dawei region, many worry about the potential environmental toll and health risks from a project that would be four times bigger than Thailand?s largest industrial estate, Map Ta Phut, where pollution between 1996 and 2009 may have contributed to at least 2,000 cancer-related deaths, according to environmental activists who sought legal action to halt the estate in 2009..."