MYANMAR - ASIA Myanmar starts to open up its economy to the world with energy, advertising and money trading

MYANMAR - ASIA
Myanmar starts to open up its economy to the world with energy, advertising and money trading
With the partial lifting of US and EU sanctions, US, Japanese and South Korean energy conglomerates plan to build plants that would end Myanmar's chronic power shortages. Advertising agency plans to hit local TV and roads. Beijing sees Myanmar as its access road to the Bay of Bengal.

Yangon has become a beehive of economic activities as US, Japanese and South Korean companies vie to build power plants, a foreign advertising agency sets up shop and China opens a cross-border yuan centre on the Myanmar-Chinese border. For a country that was ruled for decades by a harsh military regime that turned it into one of the most isolated countries in the world under tough international sanctions, the country formerly known as Burma is now making quite a comeback on the international stage. A new elected parliament and a quasi-civilian government, albeit still beholden to a still strong military, plus some democratic reforms and the return to active politics by opposition leader and Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi have led to the lifting of the US and EU sanctions and to the opening of a new and appetising market.

The Myanmar government plans to build a series of new power plants with US, Japanese and South Korean companies. Myanmar's Ministry of Electric Power-2 said the power plants would be constructed by General Electric Co. and Caterpillar Co. of the United States; J Power Co. of Japan; and the BKB Co. of South Korea, state-run New Light of Myanmar wrote. However, there is no date for the construction to begin.

The matter is urgent. Street protests have occurred over power shortages, the first since the Saffron Revolution of September 2007, which the military suppressed violently.

The problem has been made more acute by low rainfall during the monsoon season.

In Mandalay and other northern regions near the border with China, residents have complained that power is being sold to China despite the fact that current output cannot meet domestic demand.

Myanmar has 18 hydropower stations, 1 coal-fired station and 10 gas-fired power stations. They generate a maximum of about 1,610 MW during the monsoon season.

The government has also decided to use the services of a worldwide ad agency in hopes of attracting the first wave of foreign investors to the country. New York-based Ogilvy & Mather, part of the global WPP group, is the first western advertising group to invest in Burma since sanctions were eased. On Monday, it said that it had agreed to buy a stake in Today Advertising, the nation's most prominent ad agency, especially in TV since the Internet remains marginal for now.

Ogilvy & Mather, which was the first international ad agency to set up in Vietnam in 1994, now has set its eyes on Myanmar's small (US$ 33 million in 2011) but potentially large advertising market.

For its part, Myanmar's long-time (and assertive) partner China continues its move into country. Its latest move is a cross-border yuan centre in Ruili, in the south-west province of Yunnan on the border with Myanmar.

As China's neighbour opens up to foreign business, a yuan centre will promote exchanging yuan with the Myanmar kyat, and guarantee China a greater place in Myanmar's market.

Myanmar can offer China a new trading route to the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, lowering shipping costs for exporters in central China.

Lastly, India is now looking at Myanmar with renewed interest. New Delhi is bent on catching up to Beijing, its direct regional and international competitor.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Myanmar next week, the first Indian head of government to visit the former Burma in 25 years, in order to boost trade between the two countries.

Natural resources development will take priority, but Singh's agenda will also include border controls to contain refugees and ethnic militias.

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Posted by: Daniel Ioan Notar *DJ_DANY*