The Management Committee for Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone (SEZ) will present the SEZ’s master plan to the public next month, a committee member told Myanmar Business Today.
Currently, Singapore-based consortium Creative Professional Groups (CPG), which won a $2.5-million bid in March to provide consultancy services for the SEZ in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, is carrying out field survey at the project site and drafting a long-term master plan.
“We asked them to draft a long-term master plan until 2050 which will consider the development of the whole state. We will present the master plan to the public in Yangon and Kyaukphyu in June,” said U Kyaw Hlaing, a member of the Kyaukphyu SEZ Management Committee.
Once the draft for the SEZ is confirmed, the committee will invite tender for the implementation and construction of the economic zone. The committee expects work on the SEZ to start in early 2015, U Kyaw Hlaing said.
The government estimates that the total expenditure to build Kyaukphyu SEZ, which is located near Sittaw and Simaw villages in the northeastern part of Kyaukphyu township, is about $277 million.
The SEZ is being developed in four stages – the first one, a conceptual plan, has been finalised with input from economists, businesspeople and Kyaukphyu locals; selecting a consultant was the second stage while the third one involves inviting tenders for a developer, who will build the SEZ in the fourth stage.
A total of 520 hectares (about 1,300 acres) of land will be used for the project, where 20 hectares will be used for a deep seaport, 100 hectares for housing projects and 400 hectares for the economic zone itself.
Garment factories will comprise 30 percent of the economic zone, while fishery productions and small enterprises will comprise 50 and 20 percent respectively.
According to the newly enacted SEZ Law, companies have to provide at least 25 percent of the job opportunities to locals at the beginning, while the Foreign Investment Law stipulates that the number of locals employed at a company has to go up by 25 percent every two years until locals comprise at least 75 percent of the workforce.
