Economy and industry

With the concrete beam of the last span over Mekong River put in place, the main section of Luang Prabang cross-Mekong River railway bridge has been completed on Sunday, seven months ahead of schedule. The closure of the Luang Prabang Mekong River Super Major Bridge, one ...

Water levels at Southeast Asia’s largest river may be at its lowest levels in a century. Low rainfall, high temperatures and poor dam regulations are contributing to a historic low at the Mekong, affecting the region’s agriculture and fishing industries and leading to rapidly drying taps. Chinese ...

Myanmar’s launch of its first commercial solar plant last month is a step in the right direction for a country that has yet to provide more than half of its citizens with proper access to electricity. Constructed on over 836 acres of land, an area equivalent ...

An expensive high-speed railway is a nice dream, but let’s get real and build better roads between provinces first. On a visit to California, I discovered that the western U.S. state had kept pending a high speed rail proposal since 1996 due to funding cuts made ...

Getting old can be hard under any circumstances, and harder still when you’re poor. That’s the predicament for Thailand, the developing country first in line to face the consequences of a first-world-style baby bust. Data published last month by the United Nations show births in Thailand ...

The Thai government must suspend plans to buy electricity from a dam in Laos, conservationists said on Friday (Jul 26), as water levels along the kingdom’s section of Mekong river plummet to near-record lows. The Thai-built Xayaburi dam, a few hours from the northern Laos town ...

The unfortunate speculation that China is building a military base in Cambodian territory is guided by only by ill-intended and misinformed plethora without any evidence. It is utterly a smear campaign against the national interests of Cambodians and the hard-earned peace and development the national government ...

Civil society groups in three countries have called for construction to stop on a dam in southern Laos where a major collapse occurred last year, killing more than 70 people and leaving about 5,000 villagers homeless. The groups say thousands displaced by the disaster at the Xe-Pian ...

Along with its rapid economic growth, Việt Nam’s electricity demand is also increasing strongly, at around 10 per cent a year, causing huge pressure on the energy sector, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Trương Thanh Hoài, director general of the ministry’s industry department, ...

On the first anniversary Tuesday of Laos’ Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy (PNPC) dam disaster, a new report from two NGOs found that nobody has been held accountable for the catastrophe that caused what has been described as Laos’ worst flooding in decades. In Reckless Endangerment: Assessing Responsibility for ...