Sinohydro, the Chinese company set to build a billion-dollar dam on the Salween River in Burma in partnership with the Thai utility EGAT, has been criticized in an annual performance review of state-owned enterprises for unspecified “safety or environmental pollution accidents.”
It is the second high-level public rebuke in recent years for China’s largest dam-building company. Sinohydro was fined along with several other firms in 2004 for shoddy construction work on Yangtze River flood-control structures, a scandal that was exposed in a scathing report by the National Audit Office.
A supervisory body operating under the State Council, China’s cabinet, delivered the latest reprimand after assessing the performance in 2005 of 166 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) affiliated to the central government. (The number of such companies, known as central SOEs, fell to 165 last week with the merger of two of the firms.) [Full Text]