GMS cooperation brings freer flows of people, goods

Almost every day from early in the morning until dusk, Buenan, a 41-year-old migrant from Cambodia, moves around his food peddling cart in the small seaport of Trat on the eastern coastal area of Thailand’s Trat province, which borders with Cambodia’s Koh Kong province.

The small seaport, which stands as a gateway for cross-border trading between Cambodia and Thailand, has for almost two years been a trading site for Buenan, who sells various kinds of snacks mostly to workers in the seaport.

“I come from a small village in Koh Kong province, Cambodia. Now it’s easier for us to cross the border. I use a seasonal identity card for the border crossing, which we can get from the gubernatorial office in Koh Kong. The others just use the normal passports and cross the border conveniently,” he said.

He was speaking to The Jakarta Post through an interpreter, when a number of ASEAN journalists visited several development projects under the Greater Mekong Sub-region cooperation program (GMS) on the invitation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) late last year.

Yem Yan, a Cambodian immigration officer at the Cham Yeam International border checkpoint on the Cambodia’s Koh Kong/Thailand Trat border, said that cross border travel through the checkpoint has increased. “It is partly because of less bureaucracy and partly because of the improving infrastructure on the border areas,” he said.

He said that on the side of Koh Kong there had been thousands of people like Buenan applying for the seasonal passports in order for them to cross the border and work in the informal sector, as house maids and construction workers, or to do small businesses like food sales.

“I decided to do this job after I saw that many Cambodian people succeed in doing this. Now I’ve found it better than doing farming in my home village,” Buenan added.

The combination of improving management of cross-border travel and increasing economic development under the GMS cooperation program have significantly contributed to the freer flow of people and goods and to the sharing of resources, which is key to the industrial development and modernization of the sub-region.

This was contrary to the strained relations between the GMS states and very limited intra-trade and economic cooperation at the beginning of the program in 1992.

With improving conditions, people like Buenan have had a better chance to improve their livelihoods outside of their hometowns or even outside of their countries within the sub-region, which comprises the six countries of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, as well the Yunnan province of China, all linked by the Mekong River.

Initiated by ADB, the six countries set up the GMS cooperation program in 1992 to enable them to work more closely together to reduce poverty, and promote integration and economic cooperation.

Due to improving relations and increasing economic growth, people like Buenan were facilitated by this sub-regional cooperation to lift themselves out of the poverty trap.

Based on data from ADB, 10 years after the GMS cooperation program started, the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day fell from 52.7 percent to 28.8 percent in Laos, 50.7 percent to 9.7 in Vietnam, 46 to 33 percent in Cambodia, and 10.1 percent to less than one percent in Thailand.

This trend is expected to continue as member countries committed themselves to improving their economic cooperation.

During the first GMS Summit in November 2002 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the six leaders of the sub-region stated in their joint declaration: “Our most important achievement has been the growing trust and confidence among our countries, which has provided a favorable environment for trade and investment, economic growth, and social well-being.”

Eric Sidgwick, the senior country economist of ADB in Cambodia, said that such sub-regional integration and cooperation had helped lead the transition from subsistence farming to more diversified economies, and from command economies to more open and market-based economies, particularly for the state-centralized systems in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The GMS covers an area of 2.6 million square kilometers, the size of Western Europe, with a population of about 325 million, including the Yunnan province of China. This is a large potential market, with abundant but un-exploited natural resources.

The sub-region has attracted international interest, especially from international agencies like ADB, and the World Bank which provide loans and assistance to develop infrastructure and encourage private firms to invest and expand trade.

But Eric noted that human resource development had been slow to catch up with the pace of economic development.

Despite the efforts of GMS governments to improve their human resources and the help of international agencies like ADB and the World Bank, the quality of human resources in the sub-region is still lower than hoped for.

This is shown by the relatively low literacy rate in the sub-region. “In Cambodia the national literacy rate reached up to 75 percent, but in some areas like the Koh Kong province bordering Thailand’s Trat province the literacy rate is even lower than that,” he told visiting journalists in Koh Kong town.

“Without the quality of human resources, people in the sub-region cannot benefit to the maximum from rising economic development. This is a challenge for governments in the sub-region if they are serious in realizing the social well-being of their people,” he said.