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Bangkok Post News (10-3-99)



<bold>Rangoon nod expected for road project Kanchanaburi and Tavoy to be
linked

</bold>

The Burmese government is expected to approve by the end of this month a
road project linking Kanchanaburi's Ban Bongti in Sai Yok district with
Burma's deep-sea port of Tavoy, according to the secretary-general of the
Industrial Council of Kanchanaburi.


Somphop Thirasant said approval had been delayed because the project
needed to be sanctioned by a plenary meeting of the 18-member Myanmar
Investment Committee (MIC) but the recent meetings were not attended by
all members of the MIC.


Mr Somphop said he had been told by Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, first secretary of
the State Peace and Development Council, that Burma would be able to tell
the council the date for the signing of the road construction project by
the end of this month.


Kanchanaburi-Tavoy Development Co, of which Mr Somphop is vice-chairman,
has a 30-year concession to build and operate the 110-km Bongti-Tavoy
road worth US$40 million from the Burmese government.


It is hoped Kanchanaburi would be transformed into a tourism hub of the
upper west after completion of the road, which would lead tourists into
Burma in just a few hours.

---------------------------------------------------------------

<bold>Egat union opposes power plant sale 

</bold>

Employees of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) have
asked the government not to sell the Ratchaburi power plant to the
private sector.


Mr Sathaporn Maneerat, president of the State Enterprise Employees
Association of Egat, said in a letter submitted yesterday to Prime
Minister Chuan Leekpai that the cabinet should revoke its resolution of
February 16 on the sale of the power plant in Ratchaburi province to the
private sector to help Egat's cash flow.


He said the resolution contradicted an agreement the association had
reached with Minister Savit Bhodivihok of the PM's Office and Egat
Governor Viravat Chalayon on April 18, 1997, that the government would
discuss any move to privatise Egat with the employees' association
first.


Also, the association had made it clear in the agreement that it objected
to any plan to privatise Egat, he said.


Mr Sathaporn disagreed with the cabinet's proposed sale and said there
were other ways to solve Egat's liquidity problem.



He said Egat could reduce its investment, use its facilities and
personnel for commercial purposes, sell lignite ash, minimise expenses,
extend its debt repayment deadlines and issue bonds.


He insisted that Egat had originally intended to keep the Ratchaburi
power plant as its own asset. That is why people in Ratchaburi and nearby
areas had decided to let the authority build the plant and a gas pipeline
to feed the plant with natural gas from Burma, in the hope that Egat
would reduce electricity charges in the long run.


The public would no longer have this hope if the huge plant with an
approximate capacity of 5,000 MW belonged to a private company which
would be determined to make the highest profit from the facility, Mr
Sathaporn said.


The Ratchaburi power plant is under construction about 130km west of
Bangkok and will be run on natural gas piped from a gas field in Burma's
Gulf of Martaban.