Myanmar striving to lure foreign investment

Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-11 14:42:35|Editor: Yang Yi
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by Feng Yingqiu

YANGON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar continued to strive for attracting foreign investment into the country in the current 2017-18 fiscal year which began in April.

During the first four months of the fiscal year up to July, 3.1 billion U.S. dollars of the investment was brought in from 95 enterprises of 20 countries, creating 30,000 job opportunities for local residents.

Of the countries investing in Myanmar during the initial period of the fiscal year, China, Singapore, Netherlands and South Korea are leading, with China accounting for 26 percent of the total.

The sectors into which the investment poured are scattered in industry, construction, transportation and communication.

The Yangon region is currently receiving the most foreign investment, followed by Mandalay and Bago regions.

Sub-committees are being formed in regions and states with low foreign investment inflow and they are authorized to approve capital investments up to 5 million U.S. dollars and to grant tax exemption and usage of land to attract foreign investment.

Regional governments are also negotiating directly with foreign investors to build new industrial zones in their regions.

Treating foreign direct investment (FDI) under the guidelines of the World Bank to ensure smooth process for the engagement, the Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) said the new Myanmar Foreign Investment Law, enacted in October 2016, offers equal rights to foreign and domestic investors, highlighting the rights of the investors to complain if they face any breach of the provisions.

The rules and regulations of the law were ratified in March 2017 with policies regarding the taxation and relaxation of trade barriers changed to promote trade.

According to statistics, FDI in the 2015-16 financial year of the previous government amounted to 9.48 billion U.S. dollars. However, in 2016-17 only 6.4 billion dollars entered the country. The first four months of 2017-18 saw 3.1 billion dollars of investment, half of the total of the last fiscal year.

The MIC grants investments mainly in 10 sectors of agriculture, livestock and fish breeding, export, import, electric supply, transportation, education, healthcare, low-cost housing and accommodating industrial-sized cities.

The country targets over 6 billion U.S. dollars of FDI in FY 2017-18.

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