west east corridor

West-East Corridor

By Viet Chung

There has been gradually increasing progress in West-East Corridor (WEC) after three sessions of Working Group on WEC over the past six months. WEC is ASEAN's hope for a new prospect of interstate area cooperation involving least developed interstate areas in the Southeast Asian peninsula.

ASEAN countries have long paid special attention to the Mekong Subregional Cooperation as these interstate areas hold great development potential, covering parts of Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Yunnan province of China with the total population of 250 million people. So far, there have been seven cooperation programmes on the Mekong Basin development among ASEAN as well as between ASEAN countries and the outside, with a view to sharing prosperity in the region, minimizing differences between countries and enhancing economic links among Member Countries. However, the fairly wide gap of development level among interstate areas of the Mekong Subregion is an obstacle to the creation of a sustainable environment conducive to sustained and efficient development in the region. Given that context, the initiative of "West-East Corridor" (WEC) put forth by Viet Nam at the 6th ASEAN Summit in Ha Noi in 1998 to develop poor interstates has enjoyed support from ASEAN countries and a number of dialogue partners and was included in the Hanoi Plan of Action. Also through this initiative, ASEAN countries once again want to attract interest of donors and investors, especially from the outside to specific projects of great social significance such as hunger eradication and poverty reduction, and bridging the development gap. Furthermore, once developed, WEC will serve as a gateway connecting subregional countries by liberalization, facilitation, and intensification of economic integration among ASEAN countries and between ASEAN and the outside.

WEC goes through part of the territory of central Viet Nam covering 18 provinces and cities which have great development potential, yet with an average income of approximately US$ 200/per capita equalling to 60% of Viet Nam's national average and less than one fourth of the Greater Mekong Subregional countries. The WEC cooperation is not separate from the GMS cooperation but suplements and does not duplicate the existing projects in the Mekong Subregion. The regional countries have agreed on five areas of WEC cooperation, namely: transportation and telecommunication, energy, exploration and development of natural resources, hunger eradication and poverty reduction, trade and tourism, and environment.

With regard to transportation, WEC has an infrastructure of a transportation network linking mainland Northeastern Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to the Eastern Sea, which includes Highways No 9, 18B, 7, etc. The establishment of free trade zones along this corridor at Cau Treo and Lao Bao border gates will pave the way for building the interstate road network. Thailand-Cambodia-Viet Nam (Ho Chi Minh) railway route will be one section of the future trans-Asian railway network from Turkey to Singapore. These routes, together with seaports in Central Viet Nam, will give Viet Nam a new position in the international transportation system. This will also help improve Viet Nam's infrastructure, especially in Central provinces. In the immediate future, Da Nang port, and later, other seaports in Central part of Viet Nam will be upgraded or built anew and Highways No 7, 8, 9,18B linking provincial roads to deep-water sea ports will also be improved. The Central port network also facilitates transportation of goods from Laos (Vung Ang port), Northeastern Cambodia (Quy Nhon port) and Thailand (Tien Sa port).

Concerning energy, and exploration and development of natural resources, the WEC countries can share the electricity and save the cost of distribution to consumers by setting up an interstate power grid. There also exists a great potential for power export and import among countries involved. The Central Highlands (Tay Nguyen) can provide electricity to Cambodia, the gas turbine power plant in the Mekong River Delta can provide power to Western Cambodia and those areas Laos having difficulties with power supply can get power from Ha Tinh and Son La provinces of Viet Nam.

On social development, hunger eradication and poverty reduction, Viet Nam, by joining this subregional cooperation, will have greater opportunities to address these social issues. The special focus of cooperation will be job generation, training and raising of productivity. Regional countries can work together to set up several training centers in their countries in service of human resources development of the WEC. Moreover, they can learn and share experiences with each other, especially from the economies that have made early transition such as China.

Trade and tourism also represent an important area for the WEC cooperation. The ASEAN countries have signed the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Goods in Transit which is a part of an effort to facilitate goods flow in the region. Apart from trade, interstate tourism development will also make WEC more attractive. Moreover, the development of the subregion into an attractive tourist destination is a target for which all subregional countries are working. For Viet Nam, tours to the Central Highlands can be started, connecting several tourist sites in Quang Tri, the imperial city of Hue and Da Nang, and ecological, cultural and historical tourist routes can be put into operation.

Finally, eco-environment protection is another area of cooperation, which cannot be ignored if countries wish to achieve sustainable development. WEC covers almost all central provinces of Viet Nam which are prone to natural disasters and severe climatic conditions. Therefore, future WEC environment projects could help the central region of Viet Nam to mitigate adverse impact on ecology.

So far, the WEC Working Group has met three times, first in Hanoi in December, 1999, then in Hue in March, 2000 and most recently in Da Nang in June, 2000. At these Meetings, the Working Group has discussed project proposals, identified the WEC-related areas of each country and formulated specific project proposals so that ADB could combine and coordinate, and conduct feasibility studies. So far, apart from ADB serving as a coordinator, Japan has also indicated its keen interest in this programme, followed by the EU, Australia, etc.

Addressing the UNCTAD-X held in Thailand in February, 2000, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai stressed the need to successfully implement WEC projects with lowest cost and greatest effectiveness. This would lay the foundation for WEC not only to become a new drivingforce for socio-economic development in the Subregion but also to serve as a model for the ASEAN regional cooperation in the future.