Mizzima
In Episode 2 of Asia Forward, host Ei Thant Sin speaks with Ambassador Susan Stevenson, former Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon from 2023-2026, about the realities of doing business in Myanmar amid political instability, sanctions, and ongoing conflict.
Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s economy has been shaped by currency controls, import restrictions, U.S. sanctions on military-linked entities and financial blacklisting. Yet despite the conflict and reputational risks, parts of the private sector continue operating, and businesses on the ground show notable resilience.
This episode explores the real business climate in Myanmar in 2026 and what U.S. companies need to consider before entering, staying in or exiting the market.
The conversation dives deep into political risk, sanctions compliance, supply chain shifts in Southeast Asia, rare earth minerals and critical resources, the rise of the shadow economy, labor shortages, digital payments, and Myanmar’s role within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
As Southeast Asia positions itself as a supply-chain alternative beyond China, where does Myanmar fit, if at all?
This conversation offers essential context for investors, policymakers, and business leaders navigating emerging market risk.
Ei Thant Sin:
Hello everybody, and welcome to our Asia Forward podcast, where we discuss forward-thinking ideas in Southeast Asia. My name is Ei Thant Sin, and I will be your host today. I am an independent journalist, and I’ve been following Myanmar issues for over a decade. I was also born and raised in Myanmar, so how fitting that we are here for the Myanmar episode today.
In this episode, we will explore whether the uncertainty in Myanmar means for investment outlooks in Southeast Asia. To dive deeper into this topic, I have invited Ambassador Susan Stevenson, who has just returned from Myanmar less than a month ago upon her retirement after over 26 years in the State Department. She served as chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon for almost three years.
So, thank you for joining us today, Ambassador.
Susan Stevenson:
It’s my pleasure, Ei. I’m happy to be here.
Ei Thant Sin:
We cannot ignore Myanmar’s complex political history and the ongoing humanitarian crisis. But for the sake of this episode, we’re going to explore whether it is even an option for new U.S. businesses to enter Myanmar, or for existing businesses to expand right at this moment. Our goal today is to take a step beyond politics and have a conversation about the overall business climate and operational conditions. I am pleased to have Ambassador Susan Stevenson to help tackle our questions.
So Ambassador, you were just in Myanmar recently, more recently than I have been. I have to ask: how are things in Myanmar, and what is the real situation on the ground from your vantage point?
Susan Stevenson:
First of all, I should emphasize that I’m speaking now in a personal capacity because, as you mentioned, I did retire from the State Department in January after 33 years total as a diplomat. I was with the U.S. Information Agency before joining the State Department. In Myanmar now, I think we have to take a step back and look at the overall business environment since the 2021 coup, because it has been pretty difficult for businesses.
When the military took over the country, there was immediately a concern about the economy and a desire to conserve hard currency. So there were a number of factors that made things more difficult for businesses.
Number one: rule-of-law concerns. The State Administration Council, the SAC, engaged in rather capricious lawmaking. They did not have a parliament. They didn’t have an independent judiciary. And so all decisions were made, in effect, by the State Administration Council. At the last minute, businesses would have to navigate several different changes.
Then, because of the desire to conserve hard currency to allow the military to buy weapons and ammunition from overseas, there was this very complicated, which still exists, series of exchange-rate measures.
I think there was a misconception because of sanctions the U.S. government levied on the military, the leaders, and some state-run enterprises in 2023, including state-owned banks that the military relied on for foreign currency. There was a misconception that the United States did not want American companies to be doing business in Myanmar.
Actually, that wasn’t true. We knew that U.S. businesses had high-quality employment and labor standards and would help lift up the economic environment and employment for all people. But we did have a number of cautions. We particularly cautioned people against doing business with military or state-run enterprises because that could pose reputational risk. More importantly, you could run afoul of sanctions, because there are active sanctions on those entities.
There are also separate sanctions relating to Russia because of the further invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Now, for new businesses, the State Department does have a consular warning saying Myanmar is travel Level 4, do not travel. And the reason for that is the ongoing conflict with different armed groups across the country since the 2021 coup.
The outbreak of violence has just exploded. And so because of that, the State Department has maintained this travel Level 4.
Ei Thant Sin:
So the elections have concluded. With that, there are expectations that the political and security situations might get better and that some economic liberalization may be plausible. So are those expectations well founded?
Susan Stevenson:
Over the past year since the election was announced, to my surprise there was a lot of enthusiasm, or at least optimism, among the business community. And this, I would say, is both the Myanmar indigenous business community and the expatriate American business community.
At one point, I asked a Myanmar businessperson, “Why are you so optimistic?” And he said, “Well, I have to be because I’m in business.”
But I think people recognized that after four and a half years of grinding conflict, when the military announced the elections at the end of July 2025, this was an opportunity to change the status quo.
There had been hopes that maybe there was a military solution. I think that was misplaced on both sides, both the military and the opposition groups. And not to get too into the geopolitical, but there are lots of different opposition groups. So it’s not a unified set. But once it was clear that it’s pretty much a stalemate, if there’s a military solution, it is a decade in the future, the idea of an election to change the status quo was welcomed.
We were at the embassy a little skeptical, of course. We’re waiting to see once a parliament is seated and is going to select the government. But there is a wide expectation that the commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, will be the person named president.
And so I personally am skeptical that he will change any of the policies. But I think there are a few things to look for.
Number one: right now there’s an embargo on ammunition and weapons to the opposition groups imposed by the United Wa State Army under duress by China. Will that hold? And if that holds, will that throughput, the opposition groups at a disadvantage to make them more susceptible to ceasefires?
And the reason this is important is the whole reason for all these exchange-rate controls and import-license controls to conserve hard currency is because the military needs to buy more weapons and ammunition.
The second reason for optimism, and again, I personally am skeptical, is that Min Aung Hlaing may realize that to get the support of the public, because he is very unpopular among the general population, he may want to liberalize the economy to placate the business sector and the people.
Because Myanmar alone is the only country in ASEAN that has not recouped all the losses from the pandemic. And so I think there were modest growth expectations for 2026. But even 2025, with the devastating earthquake outside of Mandalay and Sagaing, the World Bank had to reassess and see the 2025 to 2026 economic outlook shrinking again by two to two and a half percent.
So because of all this, maybe Min Aung Hlaing or the resulting regime will feel like they need to do some economic liberalization.
Ei Thant Sin:
So looking at the snapshot of Myanmar’s economy in 2026, could you say from your experience on the ground that Myanmar is a failed state? And could you tell us why or why not?
Susan Stevenson:
I don’t think you can say Myanmar is a failed state, because it’s not a failed economy. The thing that surprised me even landing on the ground is that the economy is working.
You can’t say it’s a failed state because there is some control exercised out of Naypyidaw. There is some control on borders. The U.S. Embassy and other embassies have to go through Naypyidaw for visas, import of goods for embassies, diplomatic pouches, et cetera. So there is some control exercised by a de facto authority. So we can’t say it’s a failed state.
And the economy, because of the extraordinary resilience of the Myanmar people, is still functioning.
Now unfortunately, that has driven a lot to the black market or the black economy or gray economy. I talked to a Myanmar businessperson shortly after I arrived in 2023 and heard about these import-license restrictions, and he told me he hadn’t received an import license in three years. So I thought, my gosh, how are you doing your business?
And he sort of smiled because it was clear there were informal routes and land borders, particularly from Thailand. So people were coping.
Immediately they were saying, okay, I can’t get things the official way, so I’m going to go through some importer. I don’t care how they do it, but they are going to get the goods in and then deliver them to me.
Or suddenly people have to get things from the border. Instead of just paying one checkpoint, they’re having to pay several checkpoints. So the cost of transportation has gone up exponentially as you have to pay off separate armed groups, then you have to pay off the military, and then you finally get to where you need to go.
But it’s still functioning. The incredible resilience of people who have learned over decades how to work around misguided policies from the center means that Myanmar is still functioning, quite surprisingly.
Ei Thant Sin:
I want to talk about the shadow economy. It might even be bigger than the actual economy. With the economic hardships in the country, the conscription law, people leaving the country, and political instability, the environment has created a thriving space for transnational crime, including scam centers and the drug trade.
So with the shadow economy overshadowing the actual economy, how can we get past that?
Susan Stevenson:
There are lots of attempts to estimate what the shadow economy is worth. The most recent estimate I had seen was that the World Bank thought it was about 50 percent of the legitimate economy. I had heard estimates, as you alluded to, that it was even bigger than the licit economy. It’s just hard to pinpoint.
In fact, one of our enduring frustrations was not being able to estimate how much the scam centers were making or how much they were bilking Americans out of. The closest we got was that the U.S. Institute of Peace estimated for 2024 that scam centers across Southeast Asia had cheated Americans out of about $10 billion.
Now, obviously $10 billion, and if you look on a map, even though Myanmar doesn’t have the highest number of scam centers, it does have some of the biggest operations. From a satellite, it looks like a little city in some of these scam centers. So those are consequential operations.
The other thing that I was never able to get an estimate about is: what is the rate of return? From forced labor versus volunteer labor.
One of the things we know from nongovernmental organizations that help rescue trafficked victims of forced labor in scam centers is that they think there is a shift now more toward willing workers.
And we did see this. You had mentioned conscription, right? When the military regime announced in February 2024 that they were going to impose this law that had been passed in 2010 but never actually put into practice, to forcibly conscript people in the population ages 18 to 35, including older people if they had special skills, you saw some panic.
What we hear reports of is that able-bodied young men, particularly between 18 and 35, might see working in a scam center as better than being in a bank. Because not only are they being paid relatively good wages, the average daily rate was about 7,000 kyat, which is less than two dollars, but also if you’re working in a scam center, you may be beyond the reach of the military for being conscripted.
And people in non-regime areas, and there are big swaths of the country that the regime doesn’t control, are being conscripted by ethnic armed organizations too. So suddenly working in a scam center, while not a great job, may look attractive compared to the alternatives.
Ei Thant Sin:
With a lot of Myanmar people, especially youth, leaving the country, there’s a large influx of refugees and migrant workers into neighboring ASEAN countries. How does this “brain drain” affect the economy in Myanmar?
Susan Stevenson:
Obviously it affects every facet of the economy. I talked to rice farmers in the Irrawaddy Delta who suddenly didn’t have the laborers to help them clear the harvest and the crops. So that’s a big problem for farming, and that translates to other types of crops as well.
In the manufacturing sector, it’s really hard to find laborers because so many people have traveled abroad, either to Thailand, or on work permits to Korea and Japan, or they’ve tried to study overseas.
So it really is affecting the labor market. It is pretty tight, particularly unskilled labor, but even skilled labor, because so many people after the coup walked out of universities and are now trying to finish their studies abroad. So this is going to have a lasting impact.
When the military regime conducted the census in 2024, they estimated about 50 million people. The last census was about 56 million or even higher. So that’s a lot of people missing.
Ei Thant Sin:
I want to go back to the topic of sanctions. The United States is one of the countries that has imposed sanctions on Myanmar, especially on military entities. Do sanctions work? What do they achieve? And how are sanctions affecting the current economy in Myanmar?
Susan Stevenson:
Sanctions are a blunt instrument. They do have an impact, but the ultimate goal of the United States in imposing sanctions was to compel the military to step down, and that did not work.
Did it make it more difficult for the military regime? Yes.
Particularly the two sanctions on state-owned banks in June 2023. Some characterized that as a bullseye. That did have an impact on the military’s ability to get hard currency because those were the two banks that were the throughput for foreign currency.
But in the end, the pain was still pushed down onto the populace.
So I think our strategy of diplomatic and economic isolation can go only so far. At the end of the day, it, so that they would know that the United States doesn’t actually want American companies to leave. We think they’re doing an important service, as I said earlier, to the economy and to the workers.
And we saw this when sanctions were imposed in the early 2000s. You had companies like Liz Claiborne pulling out. At the end of the day, these weren’t military enterprises.
I talked to a garment factory owner who said she had three different companies. She lost two of them and had to fire about a thousand workers because she lost all the orders from the United States. At the end of the day, she wasn’t helping the military. So who did that really hurt? It hurt the people.
And that’s why we wanted to emphasize, even with Article 33 deliberations at the International Labour Organization, that yes, Naypyidaw should be held to account to allow freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and freedom from forced labor, but that companies, particularly in the garment sector that employs so many vulnerable women, were not disproportionately impacted.
So you have to kind of thread the needle to make sure that the private sector can continue.
I think if companies do their due diligence, find appropriate local partners, and are already there and invested with manufacturing, there is money to buy things, even high-end automobiles or luxury goods. So if they can get enough import licenses to sustain manufacturing, they can make a profit.
The United States, working through the American Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Embassy, tried to emphasize: if you’re here, stay. You have to make your own calculus, but you are helping the people, not the military regime.
But as I said, don’t work with state-owned enterprises. Don’t work with military-adjacent enterprises. Make sure you’re checking the sanctions list. Be careful in certain industries so that you don’t run afoul.
Ei Thant Sin:
The United States’ newfound overall priority is in critical minerals. Do you see, do you see the U.S. and the private sector taking an interest in that direction?
Susan Stevenson:
Well, the United States government has certainly made its interest in critical minerals known. The president has talked about Greenland and Ukraine. There is an agreement signed with Thailand about critical minerals, even though I don’t think there are that many critical minerals in Thailand.
Myanmar is unique in that Kachin State has heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium, that are needed for solar panels and batteries. And then there are other critical minerals that are used for weapons and other purposes.
The problem with commercial development of rare earths in Myanmar is that they are in areas that are very hard to access. As part of the offensive in late 2023 and 2024, the Kachin Independence Organization took over the heavy rare-earth mining sites in Kachin State.
As I mentioned, that is a state that has pockets of regime control and pockets of opposition or ethnic armed group control. So if you are going to develop those mines, first of all, there are Chinese companies already operating there.
Even if you were able to get a concession in those areas, you would have to figure out what you are going to do with the minerals. You would have to make a deal with a non-state actor. Then you would have to figure out transportation out, which would almost necessarily mean going through regime-held or Naypyidaw-held territory. So you would have to have some kind of agreement there as well.
We saw something similar with gas and oil development, where companies were driven to riskier and riskier areas. I think development of critical minerals in Myanmar might have to wait until there is a shortage elsewhere, because there are other areas that are much more accessible and easier to mine.
Ei Thant Sin:
In other words, it is harder to avoid working with sanctioned entities when trying to get critical minerals out of Myanmar, right?
Susan Stevenson:
Well, you wouldn’t have to work, as we don’t have sanctions currently we don’t have sanctions on the Kachin Independence Organization. But it is a non-state actor that has control, for now, of these areas. So that is a political risk one has to take.
Then to get through regime-held areas, you’re not necessarily doing business with the military, unless you had to enter into an agreement with a transportation company that’s aligned with them.
Ei Thant Sin:
You mentioned China. In Myanmar, there are already pre-existing Chinese and other companies running businesses. Where do you see room for U.S. companies to compete or complement the existing players in Myanmar?
Susan Stevenson:
The United States does have, because of laws we’ve enacted and because of the reputation companies want to maintain, higher-quality employment and labor standards.
We have the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We generally hold our companies and firms to high standards. So going into a country like Myanmar, U.S. companies tend to pay above the minimum wage because we know consumers back in the United States would not tolerate exploitative labor practices.
We’ve seen time and again that when there are press reports about sweatshop labor conditions, American companies get shunned. They really want to avoid that.
I toured the Ford Motor Company, Coca-Cola bottling, and Ball canning facilities. Those are state-of-the-art factories with what appeared to be very good labor standards.
So the United States brings a lot simply by being present.
But the proximity to China and the involvement of Chinese companies over the years mean there is a very heavy Chinese presence. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for American companies to enter.
China tends to have different labor practices. They see Myanmar somewhat the way the United States might view Mexico, a country on its border with cheaper labor costs and easier transportation access.
So Myanmar is a very important country for Chinese businesses and for China.
Geopolitically, Myanmar is important. So there is room to navigate, but right now the American presence is dwarfed by the Chinese presence, and even by Korean and Japanese business presence.
Ei Thant Sin:
You were there in the post-coup era starting in 2023 and stayed until the post-election era in 2026. There were a lot of changes during that time. What is the one thing you’re most proud of during your nearly three years in Myanmar?
Susan Stevenson:
That’s hard to say because, as you said, there were a lot of changes.
I think my outreach to the American Chamber of Commerce, and even to the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council back here, to emphasize that the United States does support business in Myanmar. In the immediate aftermath of the coup, I don’t know that that was always clear.
I think there was a rush to impose sanctions in a somewhat scattershot way in 2021 and 2022, and so it wasn’t quite as clear. I found I had to be very direct every time I interacted with businesses to make sure people knew that the United States wanted them to be there.
That’s something I really tried to reinforce so that we were ready to navigate as the mindset among people, both the international business community and particularly the Myanmar people changed.
People thought: there’s no quick solution. We’re not happy with what happened in the 2021 coup, because it reversed a landslide victory for the National League for Democracy. But we are also resigned to the fact that it’s not going to change militarily.
So when the election was announced, even though it manifestly was not a free and fair election, the mindset shifted to: it’s better than the status quo, so we can go forward.
By having American companies stay there, we were ready to take advantage of that. Meaning that as the economy grows, they’re still there and can grow with it.
Ei Thant Sin:
Since we are Asia Forward, let’s do some forward thinking. Where do you see Myanmar’s future in the next five years in terms of its role in Southeast Asia’s economy?
Susan Stevenson:
It’s interesting, over the past couple of years, ASEAN has toed the line of Myanmar is still very much a member but not having political leadership attend meetings.
What will be interesting is, after the formation of a new government, whether ASEAN will continue to adhere to non-political representation.
We saw this at the foreign ministers’ retreat in January, where Myanmar was represented by the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not the foreign minister.
Looking ahead, I think ASEAN has resented the fact that it has had to spend so much time and energy worrying about Myanmar. In general, ASEAN would very much like to have Myanmar come back into the fold so it can concentrate on core issues such as the free trade area, fisheries, South China Sea issues, clean cities, energy, and all of those things.
With the addition of Timor-Leste, Myanmar has the potential not to be the most backward country. It has resources, human capital, and every reason to be a leader, the way it was before the socialist era in the 1950s. It was the richest country in Southeast Asia. It was a transportation hub.
I think the hope is that Myanmar can be integrated and become a consequential member of ASEAN again.
Ei Thant Sin:
If Myanmar were to continue this political instability, what does that look like for Myanmar’s future five years forward? In Southeast Asia, supply chains and economies are all connected. If instability continues, what does that mean for Myanmar’s future?
Susan Stevenson:
It is obviously a negative for Myanmar’s future.
Myanmar has a low-cost but highly capable labor force. What I mean is not necessarily in a technical sense, but that Myanmar workers are very conscientious. They follow directions well and are productive workers. That made Myanmar a bright spot for labor.
If instability continues, if conscription continues, if the conflict continues, that’s something to watch. That could make Myanmar very unattractive for manufacturing as a source of inexpensive labor.
Would ASEAN leave Myanmar behind and go ahead in terms of development? I think that would be the case. We’re seeing that a little bit already.
When the United States imposed 40 percent tariffs on Myanmar goods, it wasn’t because there were so many tariffs on U.S. goods going into Myanmar, although there are import license restrictions, but because the trade imbalance was so severe.
About 90 percent of the bilateral trade was Myanmar goods going to the United States and only 10 percent U.S. goods going to Myanmar. So the imposition of 40 percent tariffs suddenly made manufactured goods from Myanmar unattractive. That led to movement to Vietnam or Cambodia instead of Myanmar.
If the conflict continues, you can expect that to continue. The military would have no incentive to loosen import restrictions. The trade imbalance wouldn’t be resolved. The tariffs would remain. And ASEAN would continue looking to manage political risk.
So I think Myanmar stands to lose out in an area where it could otherwise compete very attractively.
Ei Thant Sin:
Many ASEAN countries are trying to diversify beyond China in terms of manufacturing. Do you think Myanmar could be a possibility for companies moving production there? For U.S. businesses thinking about entering, which sectors or industries would have the early-mover advantage if Myanmar begins to open?
Susan Stevenson:
It would likely start with low-skilled sectors. When I said “highly skilled” earlier, I meant highly productive, that’s a better way to put it.
If education gets back on track, certainly the desire, as we see in other ASEAN countries, is to move into more medium- or higher-skilled labor.
But all of this is a bit of crystal-ball gazing right now.
I think because of the universities, if you look at creative cities initiatives, you need to have an educated workforce, particularly for technology or technical skills.
The internet, for all the difficulties facing Myanmar right now, the bandwidth is not terrible, certainly compared to before the liberalization of the telecom sector. But there are internet controls that make it very difficult to do business, and those would have to be removed.
If that happened, given Myanmar’s location, it’s in a sweet spot between India, China, Bangladesh, Thailand, and it also borders Laos, you can imagine it as a place to manufacture and ship out globally. It really is a crossroads.
For U.S. companies entering, there is also a wealthy class in Myanmar. I was amazed speaking with Ford dealerships that they could sell cars retailing for around $100,000, and there were markets where they could sell more than they could produce.
So not only is there low-skilled labor potential, but there is also room for higher-skilled sectors and higher-end products, with both a local market and export potential.
Ei Thant Sin:
With the digital economy, retail shifting from in-person to online, and financial technology expanding, do you see Myanmar adapting to that change, or is Myanmar stuck in time?
Susan Stevenson:
Myanmar is trying to adapt to digital currencies and digital transactions.
They enacted something called MyanmarPay last year that was supposed to harmonize various digital payment systems offered by banks. It’s actually fairly clever.
You don’t even need a traditional bank account. You can deposit cash into a digital wallet through the bank. While the money sits in the wallet, the bank can use it, that’s the advantage for the bank. Otherwise, there are no transaction fees, and you can use it anywhere that accepts that bank’s payment system.
So KBZPay, AYA Pay, et cetera, MyanmarPay was supposed to harmonize all of these.
Ei Thant Sin:
They haven’t quite done it. Is it through the central bank?
Susan Stevenson:
Yes, it’s going through the Central Bank of Myanmar, and the Central Bank of Myanmar is not sanctioned by the U.S. government. There have been calls to sanction it, but it is not currently sanctioned.
It is a way to move currency. What I always found interesting is at what exchange rate you are charged. It is best for Myanmar kyat transactions and is a good way to move money within the country.
The labor force overseas also has to repatriate currency. I won’t get into the complications of the different exchange rates at which you can repatriate, but all of that has to go into a bank digitally as well.
So I think Myanmar is poised to take advantage of the digital revolution in banking, but it still has some work to do. Connectivity is a big issue.
At one point, Kachin State had a total telecom blackout, as did Rakhine. But people adapted and started using satellite links. In some ways, they ended up with better internet than I had at my home in Yangon.
It remains to be seen how people continue to adapt, but telecoms have the potential to reach all parts of the country and enfranchise everyone.
Ei Thant Sin:
There is also some generational mistrust of the banking system. We saw after the most recent coup the difficulty of withdrawing money from ATMs, which probably triggered memories of previous crises.
The United States has also sanctioned certain financial transactions, or the movement of funds between banks internationally, right? Would that make it difficult for U.S. businesses to use systems they are familiar with to operate in the country?
Susan Stevenson:
It’s not because of U.S. sanctions.
It’s because of the Financial Action Task Force blacklisting of Myanmar. And also because of Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar, who issued a very critical report in 2024, there were reports that banks in Singapore were being used to finance weapons procurement for the military regime in Myanmar. That made Singaporean banks decide that the transaction volume was not large enough to justify the risk, so they stopped.
We’ve found that even certain U.S. banks are very reluctant to conduct transactions with legitimate businesses in Myanmar because the volume is so small that it’s not worth the risk.
But the United States government has not sanctioned all banks, particularly not private banks in Myanmar, only MICB and MFTB. Those were the two banks the military was using for international currency transactions.
Now transactions are going through Myanmar Economic Bank. There have been many calls for the U.S. government to sanction MEB, but the U.S. government has not done so.
Ei Thant Sin:
Will that deter U.S. companies from having interest in going into Myanmar? And what other things might they need to consider, reputational risk, sanctions exposure, lack of connectivity? What else should they consider?
Susan Stevenson:
You raise a good point. When you have money invested in Myanmar, it is difficult to get it out because of the challenges in financing international transactions.
That is something it would behoove the military regime to fix, to liberalize the economy and make international transactions more feasible, because it would create a more normal economy rather than a war economy.
That is something American companies should examine carefully.
In my experience, most American investment was not focused on manufacturing for export, but manufacturing for the domestic market. It is still a large market. Even at 50 million people, that is still 50 million consumers. Companies can make money within the country.
However, extracting that investment is difficult because of convertibility issues and the challenges of financing international transactions at the moment.
Ei Thant Sin:
Ambassador Susan Stevenson, thank you so much for giving time to our podcast. It was an amazing conversation. I thank you for your time in Myanmar, in my home country.
Susan Stevenson:
It was my pleasure, and I’m very happy to be on this podcast.
Ei Thant Sin:
And thank you all for tuning in. I hope you gained insight into how Myanmar’s economy is functioning and, for U.S. businesses considering entering, what you should take into account.
Full episodes of the Asia Forward podcast are available on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow us on social media, Instagram, LinkedIn, and on our website.
I look forward to seeing you in future episodes.
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