A pariah state for decades, Myanmar’s recent emergence from economic isolation has attracted foreign companies and investors intrigued by the Southeast Asian nation’s untapped potential, abundant natural resources and low-wage workforce.
The first US fast-food restaurant, KFC, opened in 2015 and other assorted Western and Asian brands have popped up across the nation’s biggest city, Yangon. With the World Bank forecasting growth of about 7 percent per year through 2019, there is reason for guarded optimism in the next several years.
Yet some of the initial euphoria over the long-term outlook for one of the world’s last frontier markets is waning. Foreign investment and exports have cooled and the currency has slumped, straining the government’s finances. A growing chorus of investors, policymakers and executives worry that the coalition government led by Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi — a former political prisoner and Nobel laureate — lacks the kind of coherent economic strategy and regulatory framework to move the country up the development ladder.
While the government has won praise for passing a revamped companies law that takes effect next month, more work needs to be done, according to an appraisal in October last year by the IMF. To really safeguard growth in the coming decades, the country needs to modernize its tax and public school systems, liberalize the financial sector and streamline business regulation.
Thiri Thant Mon, 40, returned to her native country in mid-2013 after 17 years living and working overseas, including a stint at Morgan Stanley. She sees a glacial pace of economic change in Myanmar.
“The government is slightly lost as to how they can tackle the bigger picture,” said Thiri, managing director and co-founder of Yangon-based investment firm Sandanila Partners. “There is no articulation of policy.”
The World Bank in January also called for greater clarity and communication of the government’s economic policies.
“One of the things that people do say, which I think is a fair criticism of the government, is that it has not set out its economic policies clearly enough,” British Ambassador to Myanmar Andrew Patrick said at an investment conference in Yangon hosted by Bloomberg. “If people understood exactly what the playing field looked like it would be much easier for business to operate here.”
ETHNIC STRIFE
Ethnic tensions and violence persist across the multicultural nation, where minorities make up one-third of the population. External observers accuse the military of waging a campaign of violence in western Rakhine state, targeted at the Rohingya minority. A prominent government legal adviser who called for religious harmony in Myanmar was shot and killed outside Yangon International Airport in January.
Ethnic strife aside, Myanmar remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Its 54 million citizens have a per-capita GDP of US$1,161.50 compared with US$43,876 of its former colonial master, Britain.
Overhauling the civil service and government’s traditional way of doing things is going to require deep cultural change, said Sean Turnell, Naypyitaw-based economic adviser to the Burmese government and an academic at Macquarie University, Sydney.
“I find sometimes people hanker for quick authoritarian solutions to things,” Turnell said. “In the old corrupt authoritarian order it was easy to get quick decisions — but they weren’t necessarily good ones.”
While the military continues to hold powerful sway and corruption and poverty is rampant, there is no appetite for a return to the old regime. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a sweeping victory in November 2015 elections and formed a new government last year. A relatively free media and high mobile phone penetration have encouraged a thriving forum for debate and opened up the world to people.
Investment is also pouring into the nation’s telecom sector. Viettel, the military backed Vietnamese telecoms provider that operates across Asia, Latin America and Africa is embarking on a US$2 billion investment in Myanmar — its largest outside its home market — after winning a license last year.
A new stock market has been launched, albeit with only four companies listed. Banks are being combed over to gauge their true financial health ahead of a planned restructuring designed to get credit flowing to those who need it most, according to Turnell.
“The government has actually been doing quite a lot on the economic reform front, but sometimes it has not been so good at communicating this,” he said.
It is also the case that the slowdown in foreign investment in part reflects a mixed global economy, previous one off transactions and a spat with China over the US$3.6 billion Myitsone Dam and hydroelectric project in northern Myanmar that was put on hold in 2011.
VULNERABLE
Inbound investment hit a record US$9.4 billion in the year through March last year, compared with less than US$2 billion five years earlier. Those inflows have cooled to about US$5.8 billion for the current fiscal year, in line with the government’s target.
Another worry is that 80 percent of Myanmar’s foreign investment is concentrated in the oil, gas, power and telecom sectors, according to an analysis by the World Bank, with manufacturing accounting for only about 7 percent.
That could leave the economy vulnerable to an economic shock if, say, the energy sector were hit hard.
There have been some landmark deals in the consumer goods sector. Colgate-Palmolive Co, the New York-based maker of toiletries, bought a Myanmar toothpaste company for about US$60 million in 2014, while Kirin Holdings Co of Japan acquired 55 percent of the country’s largest beer producer, Myanmar Brewery Ltd, for US$560 million in the following year.
Observers point to massive opportunities in education, retail, tourism, manufacturing and above all, infrastructure in a country where a quarter of the population live below the poverty line.
Only 40 percent of the road network is paved and 20 million people, half of the rural population, do not have access to all-weather roads. About US$120 billion will be needed by 2030 to build road, rail, bridges, airports and more, according to the Asian Development Bank.
“Logistics within Myanmar currently is a nightmare and it’s affecting all types of different businesses,” said Peter Beynon, chairman of Myanmar & Cambodia, Jardine Matheson.
About 77 percent of the population has no access to financial services, according to consultancy Roland Berger.
“We are heading toward the right direction,” Asia Green Development Bank managing director Htoo Htet Tay Za said. “We have to be patient.”
Still, hammering out the kind of comprehensive regulatory and policy framework that foreign investors need to invest longer-term is a looming challenge.
Some suggest Myanmar needs a streamlined powerhouse economic agency led by a key talisman that the world can point to when looking to do business.
“One economic tsar supported by around 12 capable people, that’s what we need,” Thiri said.
Additional reporting by Chanyaporn Chanjaroen and Karl Lester M. Yap
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