News

Businessmen, industry leaders and members of government have expressed enthusiasm after statements from President Barack Obama that the US would soon re-admit Burma to the Generalized System of Preferences. President Obama notified the US Congress on September 14 that it would reintroduce Myanmar to the preferential trade scheme ...

Tun Tun Win and his coworkers from Burma thought life was fine at the Thammakaset chicken farm in central Thailand, where they reared hundreds of thousands of birds for export to the European Union. The migrants clocked 20 hours a day for 40 days straight, shoveling ...

When the US government relaxed sanctions on Myanmar’s state-run companies and banks but stopped short of lifting all sanctions in May this year, the US Chamber of Commerce was not pleased. The American business lobby called for the US to “normalize” relations fully and introduce preferable trade ...

The divisional government launched an investigation into a resort and culture park under construction on the eastern bank of the famous Thaungthaman Lake outside the city of Mandalay, after local residents complained about the impact of the project. Some of the initial construction near the famous ...

International lawyers have welcomed Myanmar’s new investment law, saying it will create a better investment environment for both local and foreign investors once enforced. Jo Daniels, managing partner of Baker & McKenzie Myanmar, said at a media roundtable that the new law could be one ...

Torrential rain did not deter a crowd of well over 100 people turning out to witness Kofi Annan’s arrival in the Muslim ghetto of Aung Mingalar on September 7. In contrast to the protests that had greeted Mr Annan’s arrival in the Rakhine State capital of ...

Myanmar’s beverage manufacturer, Loi Hein – in a joint venture with Japan’s Toyo Seikan Co Ltd – has set up steel cans production unit in the country. Meanwhile, the concession agreement for the Hanthawaddy International Airport project is expected to be signed in December 2016. Loi Hein ...

One year after landslides ravaged northern Chin State, and geologists recommended a relocation of the state capital, little on the ground has changed, residents say. Election promises of resettlement by Christmas were largely unmet, and families eventually moved into the new dwellings continue to lack ...

Over 500 of Yangon’s licensed building contractors met last week to debate forming an industry association, which will have a long list of policy complaints to take to Yangon City Development Committee. The city’s contractors are banding together partly in anticipation of new YCDC regulations, and ...

The hills of northern Myanmar’s Sagaing region were so legendarily thick with forests that in the days of kings, condemned criminals were ordered into the woods as a death sentence. Today illegal logging has left vast swaths of bare patches, with only a handful of old-growth ...