Cabinet to discuss Mekong River agreements

By The Nation

 

Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha

 

Cabinet on Wednesday endorsed two documents for Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha to jointly approve when he attends the second summit of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group (LMC) in Phnom Penh next Wednesday.

The first document is the Five-year Plan of Action (2018-2022) to enforce cooperation and development projects, and the other is the Phnom Penh Declaration to express the countries’ political wills on political, economic and social cooperation.

 

Set up in 2015, the LMC comprises six riparian states of the Mekong River: China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The first summit was held in Sanya, China in 2016 to identify three pillars of cooperation: politics and security; economics and sustainable development; and society, culture and people-to-people exchanges.

 

Foreign ministers from the group met in Dali, China in the middle of December last year to consider the action plan, which included list of cooperation projects in key priority sectors. They are: connectivity, productivity capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction, but details have not yet been made public.

 

The Phnom Penh Declaration would express political wills of the six countries to cooperate on political and security to maintain peace in the Mekong basin without interference in domestic affairs of members, according to a government official. 

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/politics/30335314

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2018-01-04

11 hours ago, webfact said:

The first document is the Five-year Plan of Action (2018-2022) to enforce cooperation and development projects

Curious how a cabinet endorsement of the Five Year Plan of Action provides the power to enforce "cooperation and development projects." The cabinet has no legislative authority. The plan further wouldn't be binding on any Thailand regime change nor on any LMC country.