Thailand to Accelerate Planning on ‘Land Bridge’ Project, Minister Says |
ASEAN Beat | Economy | Southeast Asia
Thailand to Accelerate Planning on ‘Land Bridge’ Project, Minister Says
Deputy Prime Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said that the Hormuz crisis has “demonstrated the advantage” of controlling key transport routes.
The port of Ranong in southern Thailand.
Thailand’s government says that it will press ahead with its plan to build a “land bridge” in the country’s south, creating a link between the Indian and Pacific oceans that will bypass the Strait of Malacca.
Deputy Prime Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn, who oversees the Ministry of Transport, told reporters yesterday that the current closure of the Strait of Hormuz highlighted the strategic value of key shipping routes, and that the government will now advance efforts to develop the 1 trillion baht ($31 billion) project.
“The Middle East conflict has demonstrated the advantage of controlling a transport route,” Phiphat said, as per Bloomberg. “Thailand will have a great advantage by operating the link between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.”
The land bridge envisions the creation of a trade route across the narrow stem of southern Thailand that separates the Gulf of Thailand from the Andaman Sea. The intention is to create an alternative to the congested Malacca Strait, which would reduce shipping times between the two oceans by an average of four days, and cut shipping costs by about 15 percent, Phiphat said.
Specifically, the project will involve the construction of deep-water ports in Ranong and Chumphon provinces, and a 90-kilometer roadway and railway linking them. To advance the project, Phiphat said that the government must pass enabling legislation and that the cabinet is expected to approve a draft bill later this year. Construction of the land bridge would be completed by 2039, according to government studies. These also predict the project would break even in 24 years, generating 58 billion baht in its first year, largely from fuel sales to cargo ships.
The “land bridge” is the latest incarnation of a longstanding plan to create a trade route across the Isthmus of Kra. Up until recently, this was envisioned as a canal, an idea that dates back to the reign of King Rama I in the late eighteenth century. In more recent times, the Kra project has become a hardy perennial of Thai political discourse, with numerous governments launching feasibility studies, most recently under Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in 2018. For Thai politicians, the project has come to represent something of a charmed solution to the country’s economic challenges, which have grown more acute since the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the gargantuan scale and cost of the canal project, and the security........