http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14588255&fsrc=rss
Singapore's sand shortage - The hourglass effect
“LOOKING for sea-sand for reclamation project in Singapore. Prompt reply is greatly appreciated.”
Many such pleas can be found on Alibaba.com, a popular Chinese trading-website. Malaysia
banned sand exports as long ago as 1997. Indonesia followed suit in
2007 on environmental and, some say, political grounds. Ever since, it has become harder for Singapore to secure supplies for its booming construction industry and sea-fill plans.
The ban by Indonesia, its biggest supplier, led to a surge in the price
of sand, used in both concrete and land-reclamation. The government
averted a short-term crisis by releasing sand from its stockpile and
helping contractors find new sources. However, Indonesia’s embargo, followed swiftly by a Chinese ban on sales of sand to Taiwan, set in train a domino effect.
Environmentalists argue that large-scale sand-dredging can deplete fish
stocks and cause erosion, risking landslides and flooding. So
Singaporean contractors turned to Cambodia, where prices are low and
environmental standards almost non-existent. But this May Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, outlawed exports of sand. Again, environmental pressures were cited, but there may also have been a political motive.
After the Cambodian ban Vietnam’s sand exports
surged, achieving volumes seven times as big as last year, with
Singapore the main customer. Then last month Vietnam’s construction
ministry called for a temporary halt to the trade, to assess its impact
on the environment and the local building industry. NGOs in Thailand
and Bangladesh have also pressed their governments to reject recent
requests to allow sales of sand to Singapore.
Sand prices, which peaked at over S$60 ($43) a tonne in 2007, have
fallen during the slowdown. Simon Lee, of the Singapore Contractors’
Association, believes a new regulation requiring sand importers to have
alternative back-up supplies will help insulate his members from
further turbulence. A spokesman for Singapore’s national-development
ministry adds that construction companies have been importing sand from
“various” regional countries and claims that “recent restrictions on
sand exports have not affected the supply of construction sand to
Singapore.” But global demand for dwindling supplies of sand and other
materials is mounting. Critics
say that Singapore needs to shift faster from building cheap but
resource-intensive concrete structures towards more expensive
construction techniques that use, say, more steel and glass.
Relying as it does on low-wage, low-skilled
migrant workers from South Asia, Singapore’s construction industry is
not yet ready for such a high-tech transformation. And in
the short term there are still plenty of willing suppliers. Tim Sintop,
an American whose trading company wants to export sand from Myanmar and
has already secured several contracts in Singapore, is upbeat: “The
more bans there are elsewhere, the better for us.”
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