House of Representatives MP from Pale constituency Khin San Hlaing said that with regard to most of the yearly loan repayments being made to China, it was hard to find any remarkable projects being done with these loans.
“These loans especially taken from China EXIM Bank and China Development Bank (CDB) for implementing projects under the Ministry of Industry, for instance, Myingyan Steel Mill, Thagara Industrial Zone etc. and loans taken for cooperative societies are not beneficial to the country and these loans leave a heavy debt burden on the country. These projects highlight the bitter lesson for us,” MP from Pale constituency Khin San Hlaing said.
She said these words at the deliberations on the Annual Report of Public Debt for 2017-18 Financial Year submitted by Union Government to the Union Parliament and Public Accounts Committee’s report on its observations and recommendations on this debt report.
Myanmar annually pays back about 700 million US dollars in principal and payments on these foreign loans and of which about 500 million US dollars are paid to China annually which accounts for about 80 percent of total loan repayments.
“If we cannot resolve this heavy debt burden issue by economic means, we should resolve it by political means. Even if it is impossible to totally write off all these loans, I’d like to suggest we should try without failure to reduce the interest rates of these loans through negotiations, rescheduling the loan repayments, etc.” MP Khin San Hlaing said.
House of Nationalities MP Hla San from Magway Region No. 1 constituency said that the outstanding loan amounts to be paid back before 1988 were US$4,216.861 million, $2,744.197 million during 1988-1999 to 2010-2011, $3,147.677 million during 2011-12 to 2016-17, and over $91.435 million during 2016-17 to 2017-18 totaling $10.2 billion.
“These figures show clearly which period and under the rule of which government has the heaviest debt burden for the country but repayment of these loans are the responsibility of us all,” Upper House MP Hla San said.
House of Representatives MP Dr. Thet Thet Khaing from Yangon Region, Dagon constituency said in her deliberations on this report that these foreign soft loans had low interest rates and the repayment schedules were long but there were pushes to take these loans easily since the governments which took these loans did not need to repay them during their tenures but their successor governments must comply.
Out of the loans taken from China Development Bank, $16.408 million were spent by Electricity and Energy Ministry, an interest free loan of 80 million Chinese Yuan was spent for buying passenger railway equipment and some loans were taken from CDB Bank to be spent for shipping gas through the natural gas pipeline from Rakhine offshore gas field.
