The London-headquartered bank withdrew from the US$1.87 billion coal-fired power plant’s financing consortium, but eight other banks, including Singapore’s OCBC and DBS and Malaysia’s Maybank, closed the deal.

Railway coal depot with limestone karst background. Viet Nam, Quảng Ninh, Cẩm Phả. Image: garcycles8, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Robin Hicks – Thursday 19 April 2018

eco-business_What will be one of Vietnam’s largest coal-fired power stations has secured enough funding to get built, but a key member of the financing syndicate has pulled out following a campaign that highlighted a major conflict with the bank’s climate policy.

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Nikkei Asia Review March 15, 2018 11:20 am JST

Belated compensation for over 4,000 affected families involves opaque assessments

MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR, Asia regional correspondent

Upgrading Southeast Asia’s dilapidated rail infrastructure comes with social costs.© Reuters

BANGKOK — Some 4,000 families in Laos affected by a China-Laos high-speed rail link, begun in 2016 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, are to receive compensation, but the amounts involved and timing are unclear.

Channelled through new accounts at Banque Pour Le Commerce Exterieur Lao Public, the communist country’s largest state-owned bank, payments will be made to farmers who sustained crop damage, and to those with “residential properties surrendered to the government,” according to the Lao News Agency, the official mouthpiece of the one-party state.

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