Myanmar has suffered on the international stage in recent years thanks to the Rakhine incident of August 2017 – when 700,000 Rohingya Muslims were forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh – in terms of growth, foreign investment and tourism. Nevertheless, the Myanmar economy is still alluring (the World Bank estimates growth in 2019 was 6.3%, coming on the back of 6.2% growth in 2018), and with per-capita income on the rise, greater consumerism seems likely. Foreign financial institutions, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, are showing greater interest in getting a piece of the action.
The backlash from the Rakhine incident has set the stage for the elected government of the National League for Democracy (NLD) to push through some much-needed reforms of the country’s notoriously weak financial sector. While the International Court of Justice case in December 2019, which saw Myanmar face charges of genocide, may have lessened party leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s credentials as an icon of democracy abroad (she defended her government’s role at the Hague in person), it has arguably strengthened her position domestically. This is good news for her party’s prospects in a general election scheduled for late 2020, and likewise good news for a continuation of the reform process currently under way in the country.
