Myanmar

The World Bank Doing Business Report (2013) ranked Myanmar 182nd out of 185 economies, lower than regional average and comparable economies in the region. With its performance in all ten indicators ranked below 100th, the country has a poor business environment. It remains extremely difficult to start a business and to enforce contracts in Myanmar. These observations are in line with the conclusions drawn by the Bertelsmann Siftung country report on Myanmar that there is a lack of competition (2013). The development of the country is impeded by: low levels of foreign investment, limited integration with global markets resulting from long-term isolation, the monopolistic domination of state-owned enterprises, and frequent episodes of macroeconomic instability. Other obstacles include a lack of consistent and sound fiscal and debt policies, inadequate protection of property rights and constraints set on foreign investment.

Moreover, Myanmar lacks transparency in its regulatory and legal environment, and the government is notorious for endemic corruption. In order to improve its business environment and to increase its attractiveness to foreign investment, the government has implemented a number of reforming measures, such as opening up the economy, simplifying the registration procedure, extending the validity period of foreign investors, privatizing and regulating state-owned economic enterprises, promoting competition, enforcing property rights and loosing monetary policy. The government is also taking actions, such as enacting an anti-corruption law (2013), to increase fairness and transparency of the regulatory environment. However, implementation has been slow, and little progress has been reported by or reflected in the World Bank Doing Business report.