5 August
MYANMAR received US$5.077 billion of foreign direct investment in the first ten months of the current fiscal year, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Economic Relations (MIFER). The Myanmar In-vestment Commission (MIC) approved seven foreign investment projects totally worth of US$462.693 million and over K73,206 million that can create up to 3,662 job opportunities for Myanmar citizens.
Among the new projects permitted by MIC were Hlegu Industrial Park project worth US$ 230.60 million with mainly investment from Sembcorp CSSD Myanmar Co., Ltd. and the AEON large scale shopping mall project valued at US$180 million from Japan which is expected to create over 2,300 jobs for Myanmar citizens.
The investment proposals in the industry, real estate, hotels and tourism, and ser-vice sectors were greenlighted by the MIC during its regular meeting held via video confer-encing on 31 July.
The MIC also gave the go-ahead to 19 new foreign investment projects worth US$170.275 million and 17 My-anmar citizens-invested pro-jects valued at K60,669 million in its monthly meeting held on 10 July.
The investment proposals in the industry, livestock breeding and fishery, electric-ity generation and manufacturing sectors are expected to create 11,353 job prospects for Myanmar citizens.
Foreign direct investment inflows into Myanmar amounted to over US$4.4 billion dur-ing the first nine month of this fiscal year, an increase of more than US$900 million when com-pared to the same period last year, U Thant Sin Lwin, Director-General of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA) under the ministry told the State-run media last month. Myanmar has been attempting to lure foreign investment by providing tax relief, tax incentives, investment opportunities, and fast processing of proposals, he added. The MIFER is also inviting only responsible busi-nesses to benefit the country, he said.
The Southeast Asian country received an average of US$500 million per month in foreign direct investment in the current fiscal year, the senior official once told the media. He went on to say that the foreign investment volume was higher than domestic in-vestments by Myanmar citi-zens and the surge in invest-ment volume in the current fiscal year was attributed to the projects with large invest-ments. With steady FDI inflow in the present fical year, My-anmar is likely to meet its FDI target of US$5.8 billion, set un-der the Myanmar Investment Promotion Plan (MIPP).
The increase of foreign di-rect investment into Myanmar attributes to the government’s steps to ease regulations in an effort to attract more for-eign direct investment into the country.
Myanmar has drawn up the MIPP with the assistance of Japan International Coop-eration Agency (JICA) in order to woo US$200 billion of FDI within 20 years from FY2016-2017 to FY2035-2036 to become a middle-income country.
Myanmar is considered to be a key overseas emerging investment market for foreign investors around the world due to its consumption trends, abundant young workforce and relaxed export & import relat-ed policies. Singapore topped the list of foreign investors in Myanmar during the period from October last year to early August this year, and followed by China and Thailand. As many as 1,800 foreign compa-nies from 51 countries were given permissions to inject investments into 12 sectors in Myanmar.
From 1988 to June 30 of the present fiscal year, foreign investments in 2,033 permitted projects have reached over US$ 86.1 billion in Myanmar. The largest sector of FDI flowed to electricity gener-ation sector, accounting for 26.52 per cent of the total FDI, followed by the oil and gas sector with 26.44 per cent and the manufacturing sector with 14.28 per cent. Myanmar attracted US$9.4 billion of for-eign direct investment in 2015-2016FY, US$6.6 billion of FDI in 2016-2017, US$6.11 billion of FDI in 2017-2018FY, US$4.52 billion in 2018-2019, and is es-timated to lure US$5.8 billion in the current fiscal year.
By Kyaw Htike Soe
