- Tuesday, April 16, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S Adani Ports on Wednesday (27) said it was abandoning plans to set up a container terminal in Myanmar, weeks after applying for a US licence for the same, saying it did not violate sanctions, Reuters reported.
Myanmar saw a military coup in February and a crackdown on mass protests in which several hundreds of people were killed. The events led to an international condemnation and sanctions on the country’s military figures and entities that are controlled by the armed forces.
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“The company’s risk management committee, after a review of the situation, has decided to work on a plan on exiting the company’s investment in Myanmar, including exploring any divestment opportunities,” Adani said in a statement but stopped short of giving more reasons for the change in its plan.
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The Indian firm is expected to exit the investment in the violence-hit country between March and June 2022, it said, according to the Reuters report.
The ports’ operator informed in August that it had asked the US’ Office of Foreign Assets Control for a licence to operate Myanmar’s container terminal.
In May, Adani had said that it would exit the Myanmar container terminal project and write down the investment if found to be violating American sanctions.
It said in May that it had invested $127 million, including $90 million upfront payment for leasing land. It added that a write-down would not affect it much as the project accounts for less than two per cent of its total assets.
Last year, Adani bagged the bid to build and operate Yangon International Terminal.
Two rights groups released a report in March in which they cited documents to show that an Adani unit would pay up to $30 million in land-lease fees for the project to the Myanmar Economic Cooperation, one of the two-military controlled conglomerates facing America’s sanctions.
Adani refrained from commenting on the lease payment details in the report at that time but said later that it had a “zero tolerance policy on sanctions”.
