With some 65 countries involved in OBOR, whether or not “win-win” results can be achieved depends on a host of variables, including political risks, ease of doing business and economic stability in partner countries. A large proportion of projects remain in the planning or tendering phase, according to the EIU’s report.
Several high profile initiatives, however, have stalled.
Agatha Kratz, an associate policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC that a number of high-speed rail projects under the OBOR umbrella “have been agreed upon, but have seen little or no concrete development.”
One of those projects is China’s plan to develop a rail network that links it with Southeast Asia 一 crawling through Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Agreements on the stretch of the railway in Thailand were made in 2010 but negotiations are still taking place, according to Kratz. “This particular project saw a lot of ups and downs as it was going to be financed by China and built by Chinese companies, but the Thai government finally decided to finance it itself (while) still using Chinese technology,” Kratz said in an email.
“The official line now is that the project will start construction in 2017, but I’m sure there could be some more delays.”
For Thailand the railway would allow the country to develop outside of the Bangkok hub.
“The economic benefit (of the railway) is much higher than financial return,” Transport Minister of Thailand Arkhom Termpittayapaisith told Xinhua last December, referring to how more tourism and investment is expected to roll into regions in the country beyond Bangkok.
Other Southeast Asian rail projects have faced a similar fate. While work in Laos reportedly began in 2016, Kratz indicated that progress could be minimal. In Indonesia, the Bandung-Jakarta line is unlikely to meets its 2019 completion deadline as work has yet to begin.
Given how infrastructure projects require time before returns materialize, later stages of projects can be put at risk, especially if the “commercial and political coalitions supporting a deal … change,” added Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
