Time to set the Kyat free
The Burmese kyat has recently fallen. Down around 13 percent this year, and 26 percent since the instigation of the “managed float” arrangements in 2012, the decline in the kyat has also brought with it a return of many of the economically repressive impulses of the old regime—commands, controls, restrictions, rationing—and even the arrest of some informal foreign exchange dealers.
In the view of this author, all of this is misplaced. The falling exchange rate of the kyat is not, in itself, a problem—and certainly not a reason for the return of a mindset that for fifty years ground Burma’s economy into penury.
