OTTAWA â€" In the mid-20th century a young Canadian traveller, touring Southeast Asia at a time when backpacking around the world was not only unfashionable but high-risk, gave a bleak review of Burma.
“I have seen no country where chaos, bribery, looting, smuggling, insurrection and political assassination have been so prevalent,� Pierre Elliott Trudeau told his mother in a letter unearthed during historian John English’s research for a 2006 biography of the late prime minister.
Fast-forward from 1949 to 2013 and, on the surface, not a lot seems to have changed. The United Nations still puts Myanmar, a country of 60 million people also known as Burma, among some of the least developed in the world.
Transparency International says it’s one of the most corrupt countries, while human rights organizations are still exposing numerous abuses.
And this month the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute put Myanmar second-last, ahead of only Venezuela, among countries in terms of the level of “economic freedom� offered to companies and individuals to do business and own property.
Yet these rankings fail to take fully into account the sweeping reforms that have been launched since early 2011, when former general Thein Sein became president and took major steps to end five decades of oppressive and inept rule by a military junta.
Not only is the country’s economy opening up, but the government has released most political prisoners, is relaxing rules on free speech, is permitting the formation of unions, and is seeking or has arranged peace deals with some ethnic minorities.
“This country isn’t just economically opening up, as in China and Vietnam. They’re trying to do a political reform, a social reform, a peace process (with ethnic minorities), all at the same time,� according to Doan Nguyen Hansen, an analyst with the McKinsey Global Institute.
These reforms â€" and the entry of longtime dissident and former political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi into parliament in 2012 â€" have resulted in a flurry of visits by opportunistic political and business leaders.
With that comes a growing consensus that Myanmar is a country to watch for the next 20 years.
The country’s economy, according to a bullish McKinsey Global Institute report published earlier this year, has the potential to grow fourfold by 2030.
That would result in a stunning increase in the number of citizens put in a position to purchase consumer goods â€" from 2.5 million in 2010 to 19 million in 2030.
Myanmar’s potential is even more eye-popping when considering its geographic location at the crossroads of some of the most powerful and fastest-growing countries on the planet. On its borders are China, India, Thailand, Laos and Bangladesh â€" “countries that are home to more than 40 per cent of the world’s population and (which) are huge potential markets,â€� the report noted.
High-risk, high reward
Among the many emerging Asia-Pacific economies expected to dominate global investment and commerce in coming years, Myanmar represents an “absolutely extreme� example of high-risk, high-reward potential, according to an assessment from a Canadian parliamentarian who has visited Myanmar, federal Trade Minister Ed Fast.
Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2013/10/09/emerging-markets-myanmar-poised-to-grow-as-country-shakes-off-decades-of/
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