Myanmar to use yuan as settlement currency
Less and less foreign currencies are entering the country. Chinese state media slam US sanctions, but Myanmar activists want more, especially against oil companies.
Yangon (AsiaNews) – Myanmar has approved the use of the yuan for trade with foreign countries, Chinese state media report.
During the initial phase, the yuan will be used in settlements for small goods traded at the China-Myanmar border.
The estimated value of the trade is two billion yuan (about US$ 314 million), this according to the Global Times. This is about one fifth of the value of cargo border trade between the two countries via inland routes,
Myanmar has chosen this option in order to lessen financial pressure (and declining foreign currencies), and decouple its currency, the kyat, from the US dollar.
The article in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper accuses the US government of bullying and imposing unilateral sanctions against Myanmar.
The country’s ruling military junta is increasingly tied to Beijing, a situation similar to that of Cambodia, which was recently hit by Washington's punitive measures.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday said that the US government is considering new sanctions against the Myanmar military who seized control of the country in a coup on 1 February.
“I think it’s going to be very important in the weeks and months ahead to look at what additional steps and measures we can take individually, collectively to pressure the regime to put the country back on a democratic trajectory,” Secretary Blinken said during a visit to Malaysia, the second stop after Indonesia in his tour of Southeast Asia.
However, Blinken said nothing when asked about possible sanctions on the Myanmar’s oil and gas sectors, whose profits end up in the coffers of Myanmar’s generals; instead, he said that the Biden administration is considering defining anti-Rohingya repression as genocide.
In Myanmar, civil society groups, already involved in boycott actions against the junta, want sanctions against foreign oil companies that work with Myanmar state-owned enterprises.
In August, activists created the “Blood Money Campaign” to demand that export payments from the Yadana gas field, operated by Total in collaboration with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), be frozen.
Last month, several organisations wrote to the CEO of the French company Patrick Pouyanne asking him to "put an end to its complicity in crimes against humanity".
“We are specifically concerned that the profits gained from the Yadana Project, which we are working for, will, one way or another, help fund the military junta’s violent repression of Myanmar people,” the letter said.
In its response, Total condemned the violations of human rights but claimed that a cut in electrical power would be detrimental to the population.
About 50 per cent of Myanmar's foreign currency comes from natural gas revenues. MOGE is expected to earn US$ 1.5 billion from offshore and pipeline projects in 2021-22. The Yadana gas project earned the Myanmar government around US$ 400 million in 2017-18.
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04/05/2023 16:41
