20-year-old GMS plans new phase of investment

The Greater Mekong Sub-region development scheme, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, is moving forward with a new generation of investment aimed at strengthening connectivity, competitiveness and community over the next decade. The GMS will play a strategic role in connecting Southeast Asia with South Asia and China, the Asian Development Bank said yesterday. The next generation of investment for GMS projects will be multi-sector schemes involving urban linkages and with a focus on environmental friendliness, said the director of the ADB’s Regional Coopera-tion and Operations Coordination Division, Arjun Goswami… Established in 1992, the GMS involves cooperation among six countries in the Mekong basin: Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China’s southern provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi. GMS countries, as well as partners and the ADB itself, have poured some US$15 billion (Bt464 billion) into infrastructure project development so far… The poverty level in previously war-torn Cambodia has halved |from 44 per cent of the population 20 years ago to 22 per cent now, while the rate in Laos has declined from 55 per cent to 35 per cent, and the rate in Vietnam from 63 per cent to just 15-17 per cent, said the ADB director…

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