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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