For me, Myanmar is the last of Asia’s frontier countries, and it represents an enormous investment opportunity. I first visited Yangon, one of Myanmar’s largest cities, with my colleague in June 2013 when global consumer companies were racing to set up there before their competitors arrived. I remember seeing Coca Cola’s CEO at the airport celebrating with his employees after the firm resumed bottling operations in the country for the first time in six decades. Obtaining a hotel reservation in Myanmar those days was difficult. Even as the country was beginning to open up to foreign investment, some essential infrastructure, like banking and modern telecommunications, was totally absent.
Development in the country was notoriously stifled for some 50 years under the thumb of socialist and military dictatorship until 2011. Today, Myanmar’s economy is still based on agriculture, just as it was decades ago, and the country is one of the poorest in the world. In fact, agriculture’s share of GDP rose to 44% in 2010 from 35% in 1965—quite unique in Asia where the average share of agriculture to GDP was 12% in 2010, according to a McKinsey study. Myanmar’s GDP last year was just US$64 billion—even less than that of Sri Lanka despite having double the population size. (Courtesy of valuewalk.com)
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