Myanmar: Jade Trade Bedevils Burma’s Transparency Aspirations

Feb 16, 2015 | Seamus Martov, The Irrawaddy
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While Burma pushes ahead with plans to become a full-fledged member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global standard promoting openness in the natural resources sector, the country’s lucrative jade trade remains hidden behind a wall of army checkpoints and official government secrecy.

The entrenched opacity has created perfect conditions for the large-scale plunder of billions of dollars generated annually by jade mining in Burma’s northernmost state, a trade that is dominated by a group of well-connected crony companies, their Chinese partners and the Burma Army.

If Burma, which is currently an EITI candidate country, does become a bona fide member of the global pact without making major changes to the way the jade trade is run, it will render the EITI “completely meaningless,” predicts Tsa Ji of the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG), an organization that has been monitoring Kachin State’s lucrative natural resources sector, and the jade trade in particular, for more than a decade.