$70m from India for power
$70m from India for power
India is financing the construction of a US$70 million transmission line to bring electricity from hydroelectric projects in Laos to Cambodia, according to Indian Chamber of Commerce President Debasish Pattnaik.
Speaking yesterday after the official launch of the Indian Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia (ICC), Pattnaik said Laos has signed an agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to finance the transmission lines from Laos to Stueng Trang and the $70 million soft loan from the Indian government would finance the line from Stueng Trang to Kratie.
He said the transmission lines from Kratie to Phnom Penh were already in place.
Tenders for the construction of the project by local contractors would be called by the Indian government in October, Pattnaik said.
The Indian business community in Cambodia assembled yesterday at the Intercontinental Hotel for the signing of documents and networking in an effort to boost business connectivity between India and Cambodia.
“We are here to help and to improve the economy,” said Pattnaik.
“We can bring products from Cambodia to India, and Cambodians can take their products to India too. We want to be a bridge. India is the world’s second biggest population after China, and the second biggest economy in Asia and well,” Pattnaik said.
A letter of support between the ICC and the Federation of Indian chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) was signed.
“This signing, along with the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce today, gives us a national platform and we mean to do serious business now,” Pattnaik said.
Of the Indian businessmen, some of whom have been present in Cambodia for 15 years, about 60 per cent are doing pharmaceutical business, according to Pattniak.
“The rest of them are in Fast Moving Consumer Products (FMCG) as well as food and beverage. Today most of the Indian companies coming in are agricultural and we are trying to bring in more mining companies and oil and gas, electric power and transmission,” Pattnaik said.
Pattnaik said investors shouldn’t look at Cambodia in isolation.
“You have to look at Cambodia as part of an increasingly integrated regional market including Vietnam, Laos and Thailand which together have a population of 120 million people. Cambodia has a lot of advantages, along with being a US dollar economy. You can manufacture things and send them out to other regions. People say Cambodia is a very small market; actually it is not.”
Pattnaik said with the coming 2015 ASEAN agreement, people could send anything they manufacture in Cambodia, anywhere in the ASEAN region, which gives Cambodia an advantage.
He said an additional advantage would be the improvement of electric power during the next two years with hydro power projects coming online.
“In two years down the line, two of the biggest hydropower projects will be online. The price of electricity will come down. You’ll have that advantage. Cambodia has power agreements with Vietnam.
Cambodia also has power agreements with Laos, and Pattniak said that Myanmar, which was geographically closer to India, was also receiving a lot of attention from investors
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