Phyo Min Thein said at Vice President Myint Swe’s meeting with Myanmar businesses last week that the plan would consist of building a new deep-sea port, a new economic zone, the New Yangon project, and a variety of residential housing – low-cost, mid-range, and high-standard.
“Now we are seriously observing all the potential places in Yangon. We will be implementing new residential housing projects in all four directions – east, west, north, south of Yangon.
“When we say low-cost housing, it does not mean that it is below the standards. We are worried about that and will make sure people can buy quality apartments at their affordable prices,” he said.
“Once we finish all our on-ground observations, we will invite all the business people in the construction industry to explain them about our projects.
“We will provide them with all the necessary information so that we can prevent speculation. We are now making our best efforts to make it happen. Once we make it public, construction businesses will have a lot of opportunities.”
The chief minister said that the state will manage the land of the New Yangon project, part of the master plan.
He said that all the construction phases and infrastructure projects involved will be open to local businesses through the tender system. He promised to ensure a transparent and inclusive process when it comes to selection of developers.
Phyo Min Thein hinted that the government might control extremely high land prices in the city.
He warned business people of not taking risks in building new houses.
At the event, Tha Htay, president of Myanmar Construction Entrepreneurs Association, the largest network of all stakeholders in the construction sector, expressed his eagerness to participate in the New Yangon project.
“We knew from media reports about it. We want the government to assign the responsibility to implement the project. We do want to cooperate,” he said.
Tha Htay welcomed the state’s decision to manage the land. He also urged the regional government to approve an internationally recognised concept for the project.
“Once the concept is finalised, please let us help and we will definitely make it happen,” he said.

On an early Tuesday morning in October, a strange sight greeted onlookers: a tall, mestizo-looking twenty-something in the middle of a one-hectare field in San Pablo, Laguna – working the land in a straw hat, checking on his produce, and giving a black native pig a belly rub. Curiously, there was no smartphone in sight.
Meet Enzo Pinga who runs Earthbeat Farms, an exception rather than the norm among his mobile-first, digitally wired fellow millennials.
“If millennials are seen as rebellious in a way, because they keep looking for more meaningful work, then I guess I fit the stereotype. Organic farming is definitely not a typical career path,” he says.

The 27-year-old, who admits to having no formal background in agriculture, decided to get his hands dirty, after seeing the state of country’s farming sector when he returned from the United States five years ago.
“A friend and I got into aquaponics farming, which is farming without using soil, and were building different agri systems for communities. That led us to travel to different provinces, which exposed me to farming, big successful farms, the lifestyle, and the state of agriculture in the Philippines,” says Pinga, who holds a BA in Globalisation Studies from Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.
“The average age of Filipino farmers is 57,” he notes. “When you’re a farmer in the Philippines, you’re poor or struggling; in other countries it’s not like that. It’s understandable that a lot of young people don’t want to get into it. But we’re fast losing our farmers. What’s going to happen to our food? Who’s going to grow it? So it felt that the natural next step for me was to set up my own organic farm.”
With financial help from his father and a family friend, Pinga started Earthbeat in August 2015. He leased the land where he now grows salad greens that he supplies to some households and restaurants in Metro Manila, as well as fruits such as lanzones, coconut, banana, papaya and calamansi.
Half the week he’s in San Pablo to oversee production and the weekly harvest (since leafy greens have a fast turnover and “in terms of cashflow, it’s also quicker,” Pinga says); the other half he’s in the city to do marketing and deliveries.
“The farm is very startup – I’m engaging with clients, marketing, doing deliveries,” he says. “This has to be approached as a business. If you do it as just a hobby, you’re going to get tired sooner or later. It’s not cheap,” he adds.
But more than just being a businessman, Pinga has also become a mover of sorts among a new breed of millennials: young, educated men and women who are consciously making a serious career out of farming.
In fact, Pinga began this “movement” using a most modern tool: Facebook. By forming the online group Young Farmers, he found at least 11 others like him. Although not all are necessarily into organic farming, Pinga described them as being “very connected to farmers”.
“None of us have any formal agri background,” he says. “But we’re looking into possible collaborations and grants. Right now the online group is meant to help each other with our businesses. Down the line, it also aims to encourage more young people to get into farming.”
While Pinga admits that farming, especially organic, is still a very “romanticised” idea, he remains hopeful that through businesses like his, old-timers in the agri sector will see the bigger picture: that knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown can help the entire country’s food system.
“One of my other objectives is to grow the food movement in households. In the future, I also want Earthbeat to be a hub for good organic practices for older farmers in the area to emulate this,” Pinga says.
“Right now they’re still not convinced because they want to see results first. When you choose to go organic, you need to be patient. It will take a while before you can match the harvests of conventional growers.”
But Pinga is a visionary and remains hopeful that as more from his generation get interested in agribusiness, he and his fellow millennials would become part of the solution to a bigger national problem: rapid urbanisation that results in densely populated cities, poverty and lack of food security.
“For anyone who’s looking into farming: it’s very fulfilling work. Setting up an agribusiness will impact a lot of people in the countryside, give them more job opportunities, and encourage them to stay in their provinces. I think with organic farming, there are many issues where you can be part of the solution, if not necessarily solve them,” Pinga says.

The demonstrators demanded the selection of a Mon national while marching from Yamanya jetty to the NLD office for Mon State on Strand Road in Mawlamyine.

“We have the executive committee representing the people in our township. It selected a candidate for the by-election,” said protester San Khin. “One candidate got 14 votes, the second got eight votes and the third received seven votes. Then the list was submitted to the state committee. We expected the winner to be named the candidate but it was the one who came second.”

He said the NLD should represent its members’ wishes not those of its executive committee.

Ngwe Myint, secretary of Mon State NLD, defended the decision saying that the protesters might not understand the party’s policies.

“Chaungzone Township submitted three nominees. The district and state-level offices had to give their remarks. The candidate was chosen at the central level. The protest might have an impact on the election. They might have not understood our party’s policies very well. We will clarify matters to them,” said the secretary.

NLD’s Central Executive Committee said that the candidate proposed by Chaungzone Township lost in the election on November 8 last year.

It said it was the NLD’s policy that a candidate who lost an election would not have another chance.

The gathering, which will take place in an yet-to-be announced location on Sunday, will involve politicians, NGOs and “all concerned with the issue” the official told AFP, without giving further details.
Last Friday, Malaysia summoned the Myanmar ambassador while around 500 Malaysians and Rohingya marched through a heavy tropical downpour from a Kuala Lumpur mosque to Myanmar’s embassy carrying banners denouncing the Rakhine “genocide.”
Muslim-majority Malaysia’s Cabinet also issued a statement last week condemning the violence, an unusually strong criticism against a fellow member of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) which has a policy of non-interference in member states.
“The major gathering on December 4 is to express our concern over the violence taking place on the Rohingya,” Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi was quoted as saying by the Malay Mail Online on Tuesday.
Chong Ja Ian, a political analyst from the National University of Singapore, said Najib’s appearance at such a rally will be “odd.”
“During last year’s migrant crisis, there was criticism but it was oblique and not to this level,” he said.
The discovery last year of human-trafficking camps — and scores of nearby graves — first in Thailand and then over the border in Malaysia caused shock and revulsion in Southeast Asia.
The camps are believed to have been used by people-smuggling syndicates who move large numbers of impoverished Rohingya out of Myanmar, where they face systematic repression, with most heading for Malaysia.
Bridget Welsh, a Malaysia politics expert with Turkey’s Ipek University, said the planned gathering was “purely a political exercise” for Malaysian leaders.
“These leaders are desperately trying to show their Islamic credentials as they are losing moral legitimacy at home,” she said.
Violence in Rakhine — home to the stateless ethnic group loathed by many of Myanmar’s Buddhist majority — has surged in the last month after security forces poured into the area following a series of attacks on police posts blamed on local militants.
A UN official has said Myanmar is engaged in “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims, as reports emerged of troops shooting at villagers as they tried to flee.
But Myanmar’s new civilian government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has rejected the allegations.

Maria Chin Abdullah, chair of the pro-reform NGO alliance “Bersih”, was detained on November 18 on the eve of the rally and kept in solitary confinement.
Her arrest under a law designed to combat terrorism sparked international criticism including from the US State Department.
Despite her arrest, some 20,000 Malaysians clad in the yellow of the reformist Bersih campaign flooded Kuala Lumpur for the second time in 15 months.
They were venting anger over allegations that billions of dollars were stolen from state investment fund 1MDB, Najib’s brainchild.
“Chin has been freed. She is cheerful,” her lawyer Gurdial Singh Nijar told AFP.
“The police freed her because they have no grounds for her detention.”
Chin could not be reached for comment but was expected to address her supporters at Independence Square. They have been holding nightly vigils demanding her freedom.
Malaysia has been gripped for more than a year by the allegations of looting involving 1MDB, a state investment fund which Najib founded and oversaw.
Najib, 63, and 1MDB deny wrongdoing.
But the US Justice Department — which has filed lawsuits to seize assets it says were purchased with stolen 1MDB money — says the fund was pillaged in an audacious campaign of fraud and theft that involved an unnamed top Malaysian official.
A Malaysian cabinet official has since admitted that individual was Najib.
Najib last year abruptly shut down Malaysian investigations into the affair, fired the attorney general and purged ruling party critics Few expect him to be toppled anytime soon.
Najib had earlier condemned Bersih’s rally as an opposition plot “to unseat a democratically-elected government”.