India helped inaugurate a long-awaited seaport in western Myanmar this month amid New Delhi’s efforts to cope with rival China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia and across the Indo-Pacific.
A maiden delivery of 1,000 metric tons of cement from the Indian metropolis of Kolkata docked May 9 in Sittwe, Myanmar, at a new port funded by New Delhi.
The Sittwe port is the first node in the $484 million Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, aimed at connecting greater India with its landlocked northeast through western Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states, bypassing Bangladesh.
Aim described as “to make sure the channels with the Myanmar junta remain open, because they need to know what the Chinese are doing”
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