Tasang Dam Grid Company, China Three Gorges Project Corporation and the British Malcolm Dunstan & Associates. The groundbreaking ceremony for the dam was in March 2007, but since the ceremony, actual construction of the dam has been stalled, and there has been little activity at the dam-site. Since 1996, as many as 300,000 villagers, mostly Shan people have been displaced to make room for the Tasang Dam’s reservoir. Thousands more relocations are expected as construction progresses. The dam’s reservoir will dissect Shan State in half –almost to the Chinese border – and will negatively impact the local communities and ecosystems. Myanmar’s Junta
Three Gorges Dam government estimated that the Three Gorges Dam project would cost 180 billion yuan (US$22.5 billion). By the end of 2008, spending had reached 148.365 billion yuan, among which 64.613 billion yuan was spent on construction, 68.557 billion yuan on relocating affected residents, and 15.195 billion yuan on financing. It was estimated in 2009 that the construction cost would be recovered when the dam had generated of electricity, yielding 250 billion yuan. Full cost recovery was thus expected to occur ten years after the dam started full operation, but the full cost of the Three Gorges Dam was recovered by December