The 2016 reform of the Anti-Corruption Law increased the autonomy of the Anti-Corruption Commission (established in 2014). Given that amendments to the 2008 constitution require a quorum of 75% in the parliament, where the military holds 25% of the seats, the armed forces have a veto power with regard to constitutional changes. Instead, she endorsed the army’s operations against the Rohingya as necessary actions against local “terrorists,” echoing the military’s narrative of the violence. While most nation states continue to support the current NLD government owing to the lack of democratic alternatives, the credibility and international reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have been significantly eroded by the Rohingya crisis. Under the NLD government, civil society organizations complain of bureaucratic restrictions set up by the government. The strong backlash to military rule will push the economy into a deep … According to the 2008 constitution, the military controls the interior, defense and border affairs ministries. The bank capital to assets ratio is 4.8% according to World Bank data. Gender equality has made some progress in recent years: visible in an increase in the number of girls enrolling in primary and secondary school, improved participation of women in the labor forces, better maternal health outcomes and enhanced social protections for women. While State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi lacked the political power to stop the military, she did not speak out for the victimized minorities nor criticized the military. Under the NLD government, the locus of power has shifted to the new position of state counsellor. Central bank financing has been reduced to below 19% against a target of 20% and is targeted to fall to zero by 2021 – reflecting the goal of limiting the growth of monetary aggregates. In the past seven years, the deficit has fluctuated between 1.22% and 4.9%. In March 2018, a former child soldier was arrested and sentenced to two years in jail after he gave a radio interview describing his situation. That article noted that the ASEAN +3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) had given Myanmar’s economy a positive outlook for the fiscal year of 2019 to 2020; expecting it to expand by 7.1 percent up from 6.8 percent in the previous fiscal year. In the past half-decade, Myanmar has seen very little progress in this regard. In the beginning, the process appeared to hold considerable potential for national reconciliation, as both the Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi governments promised to establish an inclusive negotiating framework that would bring all ethnic parties to one table. In 2018, Myanmar passed several laws that include a private property framework for international investors, including the Trademark Bill and the International Copyright Bill, which, if implemented, might strengthen private property in the long term. The government adopted measures to open up the economy only since 2011. The country has climbed to the rank of lower-middle-income country. The incoming NLD administration failed to reconvene the multi-stakeholder group, threatening Myanmar’s expulsion. Two senior officials in the bureaucracy were suspended. The process of returning land is ongoing. Under Thein Sein, civil society had an active role in the peace process and CSOs provided input for policy-making. In order to modernize the economy, the government is slowly setting the legal foundations for improving economic conditions. In terms of governance, Myanmar has not overcome many severe obstacles to a peaceful transformation. Although a stock exchange is vital for economic development, the Yangon Stock Exchange has not met up to expectations. The economy grew by 5.9% in 2016/17 and is estimated to have grown by 6.4% in 2017/18. Myanmar’s military has ended its decade-long dalliance with democracy by launching a coup against the nation’s most popular political party and the former Nobel Peace Prize winner who leads it. In general, the military and civilian parts of the government deny both domestic and foreign reporters’ access to areas of armed ethnic conflict, and journalists are charged for interviewing members of the ethnic armed groups or traveling to areas under their control. Due to the pressure of democratic forces in parliament, the PAL was amended in March 2014. However, Myanmar also applied several Non-Tariff Measure (NTM) to protect the domestic market. Myanmar’s most important external partners are China, Japan and India. It thus exercises uncontrolled power over all matters of security (defense budget, border control, police and other internal security agencies). Reportedly, she also personally selected the candidates for the 2015 elections. These key areas include basic education as well as improvements in access and inclusion, curriculum, assessment, teacher training and management, alternative education programs, and technical and vocational education training. Myanmar is also a member of ASEAN and held the leadership of the organization in 2014. Aung San Suu Kyiv announced her priorities in her first address to the nation in April 2016: national reconciliation, internal peace, rule of law, constitutional reforms and further democratic development. The range of interest groups has expanded since the country’s political opening. Also, there are numerous challenges for civil society in ethnic-minority areas. Some of these setbacks can be explained by the continued militarization of the government, others cannot. Under pressure from the U.N. and international community, the NLD government vowed to accept the recommendations of the commission. Aung San Suu Kyi has also repeatedly stressed that reconciliation first requires peace. President Win Myint also met with members of the Anti-Corruption Commission, which lacked teeth as it was seen as being too close to the government. In order to mitigate distortions resulting from the currency fluctuation, the central bank decided to float the kyat freely on the market (and remove the 0.8% trading band). In addition, they often remain dominated by former cronies of the military regime. Since 1948, various armed ethnic groups have waged war against the government for autonomy in their ethnic areas. Public assemblies now require the consent of the authorities, which do not have the right to deny these permissions. Within the civilian government, power is concentrated in the hands of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and a few change agents in her cabinet who are attempting to push forward NLD’s reform agenda. The Rohingya crisis is also poisoning relations with Bangladesh, which currently hosts approximately one million Rohingya refugees (refugees from the 2016 and 2017 crisis as well as Rohingya who fled during earlier waves of repression and communal unrest). Under President Thein Sein, the country has been revising trade-related legislation. While the external debt stands at 16% of the GDP, the overall public debt level is currently at 37%. In addition, in October 2018, the KNU and the RCSS, which had originally signed the NCA, suspended their participation in the peace talks. Under the new scheme, retirement benefits have also seen a boost. Aung San Suu Kyi has defined national reconciliation as “healing past divisions, particularly between the military and the civilian populations and between supporters and opponents of the NLD” – a rather narrow understanding that does not include also reconciling the needs of the ethnic groups. In 2018, the government pushed the officially recognized Buddhist authority (MaHaNa) to sanction the Ma Ba Tha, which ultimately disbanded Ma Ba Tha. In addition, she is foreign minister, president office minister and formally in charge of the peace process. (1) Myanmar Times Daily (Myanmar) For the time being, however, the GAD remains dominated by military personnel, limiting the department’s independence from the armed forces. When asked whether democracy is the best form of government despite its problems, 90% of respondents agreed. Other essential components of democratic life have witnessed serious setbacks, including press freedom and civil liberties. This goal, however, is unacceptable to the military. Old colonial laws, laws dating back to the time of military rule and relatively modern laws exist side by side, impeding policy coordination. The numbers do not diverge significantly from the past few years, in which the defense budget has accounted for 13% to 14% of the total budget during the fiscal year. As a consequence, Myanmar performs among the lowest third in the UNDP Education index (with a score of 0.443), which captures the level of education by measuring the average years of schooling of adults. The U.N. Human Rights Commissioner called this move a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Aung San Suu Kyi remained silent and even criticized the West for distributing fake news. These groups incite hatred against the Muslim minority and, to a lesser extent, against other religious minorities. In addition, the government is currently developing a highly restrictive NGO law, which, if passed in its current form, would severely restrict foreign (financial and other) donor support to domestic NGOs. Agriculture still makes up more than 50% of the labor force and attempts at industrialization have only recently begun in the industrial zones around Yangon. Under Thein Sein, much power was held in the President’s Office (sometimes causing tensions with the legislature). They have also, at times, campaigned against the NLD and other representatives of the country’s nascent democratic institutions. (4) Myanmar Times Websites (Myanmar/English) Military raises spectre of coup over Myanmar election turmoil. Civil society, thus, also has significant “dark sides” that impact the country’s democratization process in a highly negative way. The NLD government distrusts civil society and questions its legitimacy as a voice for the people. Overall, the government’s actions against the ultra-nationalist Buddhist groups appear to be an uphill struggle, since these groups are extremely effective in their online agitations and have powerful connections to all major political parties and the military. Both in 2016 and 2017, ARSA launched attacks against Myanmar border guards along the country’s border with Bangladesh. Women face discrimination: ethnic-minority women not only face barriers in participation, they are also denied property rights. There are also an additional 600,000 informal businesses. Particularly constraining are the close relationships between the military and crony businesses that dominate the private sector. Myanmar cooperates with these three states on the basis of good neighborly relations. The Burmese (Bamar) make up approximately 60% of the population and mostly live in the Burmese lowland. Approximately one-third of all land is considered VFV land and 75% of this land is located in ethnic states, where private businesses, such as Chinese plantation enterprises, are currently seeking to acquire huge areas of land for business purposes. The new political leadership has attempted to bridge cleavage-based conflict and expand political consensus in some areas. In 2011 and 2012, the Thein Sein government launched an opaque privatization process that transferred many formerly state-owned enterprises to former military personnel and military cronies, thereby entrenching structures of crony capitalism in the country. The NLD won a landslide victory in the 2015 elections, securing a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and in most of the regional parliaments; the exceptions were Shan State and Rakhine State, where ethnic parties won most of the votes. Aung San Suu Kyi has also avoided convening the National Defense and Security Council, instead appointing her own security advisers. While the NLD-administration slightly reduced the influence of the (powerful) ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks in the Myanmar heartland, it did not even try to constrain the influence of the armed forces in matters relating to security and ethnic conflict. The NLD, which holds the majority in parliament, limits checks and balances within its own ranks through the application of strict party discipline. These include chronic poverty in large parts of the country, especially within ethnic community areas, very low education levels and grossly insufficient infrastructure. As a consequence, the Anti-Corruption Commission was able to bring down some high-level officials in the judiciary, including the attorney general and several judges in Yangon. For decades, the military regime deliberately tried to prevent the emergence of an autonomous civil society. This has led to a further democratization. Military officers and high-level politicians still appear to be out of reach for serious corruption investigations. The Myanmar Race and Religion Protection Laws (2015) codify severe forms of discrimination against the wider Muslim minority, restricting their rights to choose whom to marry and to have children. The biggest ethnic armed organizations, which control significant terrain, have not signed the NCA and are excluded from the ongoing peace talks. Though Human Rights Watch and other groups said the elections … There remain many challenges, including the integration of education systems in the ethnic regions and offering greater autonomy to universities. Inflationary pressures have increased with economic growth, but the government has endeavored to keep it in check. The state’s monopoly on the use of force is established in most parts of central Myanmar as well as in some ethnic-minority areas; large ethnic-minority areas along the borders to China and Thailand remain contested terrain. Contents Myanmar’s democratic period from 1948 to 1962 was characterized by political instability and growing ethnic conflicts, luring the army into politics. According to a 2018 study by the Asia Foundation, around 118 of the 330 districts in the country, roughly one-quarter of the population, were impacted by the violence between various ethnic groups or between ethnic armies and the Tatmadaw (Myanmar armed forces) in 2017. This page has economic forecasts for Myanmar including a long-term outlook for the next decades, plus medium-term expectations for the next four quarters and short-term market predictions for the next release affecting the Myanmar economy. On the local level, activists and NGOs still face repression from the authorities, since they often have contacts to the ethnic armed groups, which makes them suspicious in the eyes of the military. Nevertheless, the NLD set up a committee at the end of 2018 to draft suggestions for a constitutional reform. Since the opening up, new policies have been enacted that relax the previously strict trading rules by opening certain sectors up to foreign participation. This equals 4.94% of the GDP, approaching the 5% benchmark the government is attempting not to breach. © Copyright 2021 The Myanmar Times. In 1988, growing economic turmoil and political grievances led to a nationwide nonviolent uprising. In addition, money for funeral arrangements are increased by one to five times of a worker’s salary. The military supports what it calls a “discipline-flourishing democracy.” Seeing itself as the guardian of that political order, it blocked the NLD’s motion in 2014 to reduce the military’s role. Often the framework or standards for these innovations are provided by international organizations (e.g., the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI). The central bank is also phasing out the financing of deficits. Most of these eight groups were rather small and lacked military capacity. Second, some of the members of the Anti-Corruption Commission were replaced to give it more teeth. Myanmar Consolidated Media Co., Ltd. will temporarily suspend 3 months the following businesses starting from 21 February 2021 at 10:00 am. The NLD-led government has used Art. In addition, the reinstallation of targeted sanctions against leading military officers and military-owned corporations should be considered. Following the 1962 coup, Myanmar was ruled by the military until 2011. Particularly those civil society organizations with contacts to the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAO) face the risk of being arrested. Moreover, civil society organizations have been sidelined in the peace process. It neither allowed an international fact-finding mission to collect data nor has it cooperated with the U.N.’s Human Rights Council. Third, the military can use the National Defense and Security Council, in which it holds a majority, to steer both the border police and peace process. While the economy performed quite well in recent years, the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State led to a decline in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and tourism. President Win Myint has intensified the fight against corruption in the government. Civil society remains very divided along ethnic, political and religious lines, making it very difficult to build social capital. Since 2018, however, it has taken steps to limit the military’s influence over the state apparatus in some policy areas. Myanmar’s economic performance has been quite vibrant over the past few years. In policy areas dominated by the military and that have a national security importance, there is little to no interest in policy learning among the ministries. The NLD tried to appease the military in the first year of its administration. The military has already announced that far-reaching constitutional changes that include a reduction of its own political role should not be expected in the short term. The 2014 Race and Religion Protection Laws severely curtail the personal freedoms of Muslims as well as the right of women to choose their own faith and marriage partners. Myanmar has heavily relied on natural resources to boost its economy. This lack of knowledge is confirmed by the ABS findings. The Tatmadaw (Myanmar armed forces) announced a unilateral ceasefire in late 2018. However, if the EU decided to withdraw the GSP status from Myanmar in response to the Rohingya crisis, particularly the garment industry would be seriously damaged. In rural areas, poverty is much higher, with the highest rates in Chin State (73%), Rakhine State (44%) and Shan State (33%). Reconciliation will not take the form of truth commissions or trials where military actors are held accountable for past human rights violations. Recognizing that the country needs foreign capital and technology for sustainable development in the future, the government started to liberalize its highly controlled economy. The NLD government took over the bureaucrats of the former administration in order to guarantee job security. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) formed in late 2012 in order to fight against the long-standing repression of the Rohingya. Under the direction of Aung San Suu Kyi, a new “independent commission of inquiry” was formed. Discussions to privatize the electricity market and transport system are under way. Since 2015, the government is fragmented between civilian- and military-controlled segments that do not communicate effectively. This leads to a lack of action, coordination and initiative on the part of those ministries and other administrative units that are controlled by the civilian part of the government. (8) Myanmar Times TV Under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and a number of bilateral donors, the government enacted a number of laws that have strengthened the banking system. After two years in power, the NLD administration has a mixed scorecard. In 2017, the first Competition Law came into effect. In this budget, the share of health and education combined amounts to 13%, while military spending also total 13%. The Tatmadaw (military) on January 26 raised the prospect of a coup d’etat if the government could not satisfac­... see more. The composition of the executive, which includes the military, makes prioritization and policy-making extremely difficult. Myanmar has been a Member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995. Myanmar: A Political Economy Analysis Kristian Stokke, Roman Vakulchuk, Indra Øverland Report commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2018. Persisting structures of crony capitalism are bound to hinder the implementation of the law. The military, which holds a veto over constitutional amendments, protested vehemently. Consequently, the IMF currently sees a relatively low level of debt distress. According to these newer findings, interpersonal trust levels have decreased further under the NLD government and optimism toward future democratic development is decreasing. Women also less often attend university. Importantly, the military is not subject to civilian oversight – neither from the parliament nor from the civilian executive. Nearly as many (89%) reported that democracy is “capable of solving the problems of their society.” The results of the 2015 elections were generally in line with the strong popular support for democracy indicated in the ABS, as Myanmar’s citizens rejected continued rule by the military (represented in the electoral process by the USDP). Although the NLD made the fight against corruption a top priority, the government only began undertaking noteworthy steps to ramp up the fight against corruption in 2018. President Thein Sein eased military repression and control. Despite a number of prominent female politicians and intellectuals in leadership positions, equality of opportunity is lacking. Additional reforms are needed to eradicate repressive laws of the past. The period also witnessed blatant human rights abuses against the Rohingya. First, the military holds 25% of all seats in the country’s national and regional parliaments – these are appointed by the Commander in Chief. At the top of the pyramid is a handful of large conglomerates and state-owned enterprises engaged primarily in extractive, construction, banking and import/export industries. Myanmar Economic Growth The economy is expected to grow at the slowest pace on record this year, before growth picks up solidly in 2021 on the back of strengthening clothing and natural gas exports and stable agricultural production. The EU should refrain, however, from withdrawing the GSP+ status from Myanmar, as this would hurt the general population and civilian share of the government much more than the military. While Aung San Suu Kyi is enlisting national and international advisers for certain policies areas (e.g., the economy and peace), it is unclear whether she actually follows their advice. The picture improved when respondents were asked whether most people in their neighborhood could be trusted, with 56% agreeing strongly or somewhat, and 43% disagreeing. The government has organized a major investment summit for early 2019 to attract new spending. Myanmar's first democratically elected parliament will be in session from the 1st of February, 2016. Given the stagnation of the peace process, peace with the ethnic minorities remains largely elusive. The Aung San Suu Kyi government should step up its efforts to overcome the legacies of Myanmar’s authoritarian past and show more openness. Criticism toward the court relates to its low caseload, perceived capture by the President’s Office and that it is not open to civil society. Consequently, the extent to which they truly represent the rural poor and other marginalized groups remains questionable. He advised them to step up the fight against corruption. Scholars estimated Myanmar’s informal economy from 1999 to 2006 to be about 50.7%. In 2018, the NLD decision to name bridges after (Bamar) independence hero Aung San sparked resistance in some of the regions (Mon and Shan State). Consequently, experts and representatives of the UN as well as several countries consider the military’s atrocities to amount to acts of ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide. The most powerful ethnic armed groups abstained. Today, the challenges are immense. In one of his first meetings after taking office, President Win Myint urged commission members in April 2018 to act against corrupt officials regardless of their status and report any attempts to interfere in the commission’s work. Second, the essence of presidential democracy, which Myanmar practices, is the system of checks and balances between three pillars. 82% could not name any branches of government. The military responded with far-reaching operations. Though moving the GAD from the military-controlled Interior Ministry to the President’s Office may have reduced the military’s influence over the state administration, its enormous influence continues to cast a shadow over the parliamentary system. Another example: Aung San Suu Kyi has long refrained from publicly addressing the plight of the Rohingya and the wider Muslim minority to avoid losing the support of the Buddhist majority population, among whom anti-Muslim sentiments are widespread. Today, as Myanmar gears up for another general election on Nov. 8, the situation is starkly different. While military companies provided social security for the soldiers, protection for the rest of the population was extremely spotty, with less than two million persons covered. That has helped to reduce inflation from 10% in 2015 to 6.5% in 2016. Since then, the USDP has attempted to rid its image of being a pure proxy party, but the ongoing nationalist rhetoric of the party and reliance on the military make a true reform difficult. Consequently, these ministries often resist reform and the capacity of the elected, civilian part of the government to set priorities and affect changes in these areas is close to nil. Market competition faces above all bureaucratic hurdles. While FDIs increased in 2016/17, new FDIs significantly declined in 2017/18 (by 50% in the first half of 2018). The government rarely announces its goals and lacks the strategic capacity to organize its policy-making effectively. Official tax authorities cannot reach many villages even in central Myanmar, and some of these villages lack basic infrastructure, communication, transportation, and do not have access to basic services, such as water, education and health care. National identity revolves around a core defined by the Burmese majority and includes the Buddhist religion, Burmese language and Burmese ethnicity. The current NLD government set up the Development Assistance Coordination Unit (DACU) under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi to more effectively manage international aid. The law prohibits anti-competitive agreements and introduces a merger control regime. The party system is made up of the NLD and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which largely draw their members from the Bamar Buddhist majority, and several smaller, mostly ethnic-minority parties. Myanmar ranks 138 out of 180 on the 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which ranks countries based on 22 performance indicators in policy categories such as air and water pollution next to impacts on agriculture, fisheries and forests. All this shows that Aung San Suu Kyi is exploiting existing cleavages – here with the intention to unite all Buddhists behind her. His government also began a reconciliation process with the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi. Highly arbitrary, the latter distinction is based on British practices and only gained traction under the military regime of Ne Win. The military used this power in 2015, when it vetoed a motion to lower the threshold for constitutional changes, which would have reduced its veto power. With a clear NLD majority in parliament, military lawmakers very often play the opposition role – highlighting diverging policy preferences; for example, criticizing the 2018 shift of the start of the fiscal year to October or simply shielding the military from criticism. These include the legacy of military rule, which has influenced civil society’s willingness to engage directly in political arenas. Nevertheless, Myanmar’s revenues have stagnated at 6.4% of the GDP (2016), driven by tax base erosion, with income tax as a share of the GDP among the lowest in the world. The government has reduced the role of civil society in the peace process, downgrading it to an observer. Space for civil society existed only in areas of limited state control (i.e., in education and health, where the state was too weak) or in ethnic-minority areas, where civil society was helping rural communities. Ultimately, the NLD recognized the importance of the EITI process and negotiated a delay of the report. Ethnic groups have made the goal of a federal union a top priority, including the establishment of a federal army. Given that the number of Rohingya still living in Myanmar amounted to only 1 to 1.2 million before the military’s operations in 2016, this means that the vast majority of this ethnic minority has now been displaced from Myanmar. For example, in January 2018 local authorities violently dispersed a demonstration of 4,000 Rakhine nationalists who wanted to commemorate the end of the Arakan Empire; seven protestors died when the police tried to end the demonstrations. Sai Aung Main—AFP/Getty Images This arrangement is temporary because the position of state counsellor is specific to Aung San Suu Kyi, who is not allowed to advance to the presidency. Since Aung San Suu Kyi was constitutionally barred from running for president, parliament created the position of state counsellor in 2016. 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