I am encouraged by a couple of events that occurred recently.
Firstly, the Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission of China (NDRC), Mr. Ning Jizhe, paid an official visit to Myanmar late last month. During his formal courtesy call to the Yangon Chief Minister, Mr. Ning reiterated China’s support for the development of New Yangon City. This is significant as a considerable sum of investment will be required for the construction of the basic infrastructure for the viability of the new city.
Secondly, a 37-member strong delegation from Hong Kong led by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council visited Yangon last week. The delegation consists of many industrialists and manufacturers who expressed keen interest to invest in New Yangon City as well as to migrate many of their existing manufacturing facilities from China to Myanmar. NYDC was fortunate to have a special session with the delegation on 28 November 2018, which gave us the opportunity to provide more details of our New Yangon City to the delegation. It was a successful and productive session. The feedback and the positive reaction to the project allowed us to further fine tune our plans to accommodate the influx of investments and manufacturing enterprises coming our way.
Work in Progress
On the planning and development side of things, our consultant for the Master Plan, AECOM, has completed the first version of the master planning of the city. We will be presenting this at a Visionary Workshop this Friday.
Regional and City officials, relevant departments from the Government, Executive Committee members from the Myanmar Engineering Society and Association of Myanmar Architects, together with various stakeholders will be invited to the Workshop for consultations. Due to the limited space available, only a limited number of the public can be accommodated at this event. However, a larger audience will be included for consultations when the second version of the Master Plan is completed in early January.
At the end of October, we also completed the interim reports for Flood Risk Assessment and Traffic & Transport Planning. We continue to conduct collaborative design consultations amongst all consultants and expect to complete the second phase of design by early January.
On 20th November, ERM Myanmar Company Ltd., was selected as the highest-ranking consultant for the Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environment Impact Assessment study.
We have also completed the Pre-Project Documents (PPD) and our next step is to submit the draft to the relevant authorities, namely, the Regional Government Cabinet and the Regional Attorney General’s Office for their review and approval. Once that is completed, we will be able to publish the PPD and commence with the NYDC Challenge process.
Regards,
Serge Pun