President U Thein Sein urged the adoption of an investment plan to better align foreign investment with city and township development projects in his opening remarks at a workshop on land resource management for urban and rural development projects.
Although the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) is providing one-stop service as provisioned by investment laws, the process continues to see delays due to what the president called a “lack of an investment plan.”
Currently, central ministries, state and regional governments decide what kind of investments should be approved in what townships and locations and verify if they are aligned with current development projects and needs – a process that is long and tedious.
The president also highlighted the need to review the investments of particular areas to see if they are compatible with local development projects, contribute to local job opportunities and economic development expectations – or if they are hampering socioeconomic progress or damaging the environment.
“Investments are necessary. So I think the government is taking the required steps to make investment impactful. We have to wait and see what the plan will look like,” Daw Yi Yi Myint, former principle of Yangon Economic University, told Myanmar Business Today.
Currently, Myanmar boasts 38,162 locally owned companies, 3,032 foreign subsidiaries, 1,072 joint ventures and 73 local-foreign partnerships. A total of 96 foreign companies have been approved from January to June this year to invest in communications, manufacturing, hotel and tourism, mining and agriculture sectors, according to the Directorate of Investment and Companies Administration.
