DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMES IN MYANMAR: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF KOREA

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are major contributors to country's economy and serve as a backbone of economic growth especially for developing countries like Myanmar. The government endeavors to promote the SMEs through a series of economic and political reforms in its transition to market-oriented economy. However, SMEs in Myanmar are still facing several challenges to achieve economies of scale and competitiveness to penetrate regional and international market. This paper aims to assess the current situation of entrepreneurship and SMEs in Myanmar and to explore the ways to promote entrepreneurship and SMEs development with the references to experience of Korea. To realize this end, the influencing factors on entrepreneurial activities and the challenges and issues facing by Myanmar SMEs have been analyzed. At the same time, institutional setup and policy environment that lead to significant increases of entrepreneurship and development of SMEs in Korea were also explored in order to find out the ways to improve policy measures and to create conducive environment for entrepreneurship and SMEs development in Myanmar. According to the survey, the challenges faced by Myanmar SMEs can be summarized as limited sources of finance and technology, insufficient facilitation for accessing international market, weak institutional and legal environment, and inadequate supporting services for new set-ups, in order of importance. This paper proposed policy recommendations based on survey results of Myanmar SMEs and policy and institutional environment of Koreas SMEs sector. These policy measures are expected to create conducive and business-friendly environment and thereby, lead to development of entrepreneurship and SMEs and eventually, the growth of Myanmar economy

DEVELOPMENT OF SMES IN MYANMAR

This paper aims to explore the role of SMEs in Myanmar economy. It analyses the contribution of SMEs in the economy and identifies the opportunities and obstacles of Myanmar SMEs. TO reach research objectives, the study is conducted based on 150 SMEs which are registered for at least two years and not more than 100 employees at the year of establishment and operates in manufacturing, processing, wholesaling, retailing, or services provision sectors in Yangon Municipal Area for the period of March to May 2014. To identify the current situation of SMEs in Myanmar, this research mainly focuses on seven areas, namely, institutional framework, access to supporting services, access to finance, access to technology, international market expansion, entrepreneurial education; and representation of SMEs’ interests. The study found out that while political willingness, enthusiastic implementation of national development planning, private sector participation, and momentum of regional integration in ASEAN region can create opportunities for Myanmar SMEs, weak institutional and legal environment, limited sources of finance and technology, weak managerial skills, inadequate infrastructures, weak readiness in business strategies and practices to face regional integration are major hindrance that calls upon concrete and applicable policies and supporting institutions for development of SMEs in Myanmar

DEVELOPMENT OF SMES IN MYANMAR

This paper aims to explore the role of SMEs in Myanmar economy. It analyses the contribution of SMEs in the economy and identifies the opportunities and obstacles of Myanmar SMEs. TO reach research objectives, the study is conducted based on 150 SMEs which are registered for at least two years and not more than 100 employees at the year of establishment and operates in manufacturing, processing, wholesaling, retailing, or services provision sectors in Yangon Municipal Area for the period of March to May 2014. To identify the current situation of SMEs in Myanmar, this research mainly focuses on seven areas, namely, institutional framework, access to supporting services, access to finance, access to technology, international market expansion, entrepreneurial education; and representation of SMEs’ interests. The study found out that while political willingness, enthusiastic implementation of national development planning, private sector participation, and momentum of regional integration in ASEAN region can create opportunities for Myanmar SMEs, weak institutional and legal environment, limited sources of finance and technology, weak managerial skills, inadequate infrastructures, weak readiness in business strategies and practices to face regional integration are major hindrance that calls upon concrete and applicable policies and supporting institutions for development of SMEs in Myanmar

AN ANALYSIS ON INFLUENCING FACTORS OF MYANMAR’S IMPORTS*

Since its adoption to market-oriented economic system, Myanmar initiated “export promotion and import substitution” to be the main planks of Myanmar trade policy. The major instruments of trade control are license, quantitative restrictions and foreign exchange control rather than through high import duties or export levies. Moreover, investment restriction, trade sanction and several restricted measures imposed by the United States and European countries also had large impact on the structure and direction of Myanmar’s trade. This paper has attempted to identify the factors that affect on the directions and trends of Myanmar’s imports and to provide trade policy implications under the framework of basic gravity model. In order to quantify the determinant factors of Myanmar’s imports, actual bilateral import volume is compared to the predicted volume estimated by the gravity equation. During a decade, Myanmar has more relied on the neighboring and other Asian countries for its external trade. However, actual import volume of Myanmar from its neighboring countries are much lower than the potential predicted by the gravity equation, thus it can be envisaged that there are existence of trade barriers and unrecorded informal trades in border area. Even though tariff rates of Myanmar is relatively low in line with CEPT scheme of AFTA, effective tariff rate is supposed to be high and thereby creating low volume of actual trade recorded. These findings suggest that having large extent of informal trades in border areas, Myanmar needs to take possible measures to regularize and institutionalize such trade activities in order to promote formal trade and improve government revenues

MYANMAR & BIMSTEC

This paper aims to assess the situation of Myanmar position in Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and to explore the challenges and potential for Myanmar as a member of BIMSTEC. The main advantage of Myanmar is its geostrategic position as a link between South and Southeast Asia and share border with three member countries: Bangladesh, India, and Thailand. Despite such locational advantage it possesses, the benefits from participating in BIMSTEC has yet to be fully realized for many reasons. The main reasons are weak and less momentum in cooperation between member countries in respective sectors especially in agriculture, energy, trade and investment, and transportation. This paper recommends to accelerate the collaboration and coordination between member countries in such areas as building regional value chains for agriculture products, establishing regional networks for agriculture and food security, and improving transport connectivity including multi-modal transportation, and operationalizing grid interconnection and Energy Centre in order to promote trade, investment, and people connectivity. By implementing these measures, Myanmar can be expected to boost its trade, investment and tourism and thereby, to grasp its economic potential and prosperity of Myanmar people

Asia Supply Chain Report: Mandalay Region, Myanmar

The main purpose this report is to assess the potential of Mandalay to become an attractive investment site for export oriented foreign manufacturing firms. The study found that Mandalay has many external constraints to become industrial hubs of Myanmar infrastructure particularly in electricity, land and financial aspects that need to be tackled urgently and fundamentally. For internal constraints, finance is found as a major problem for business to expand. Technology, skill development, machines and equipment are found as also important internal barriers for the firms. Despite these, there have important opportunities for some industries including agricultural food processing, ICT and electronic component parts manufacturing and textile industries. By using locally abundant resources of agricultural produces and labor force coupled with money and technology brought by foreign investors, these industries have huge opportunities for growth. To be qualified local firms in Mandalay as suppliers to international companies and to become Mandalay as an attractive manufacturing site for foreign firms, a number of positive measures need to be implemented. This inevitably takes some time to achieve. For macro level interventions, foresighted and consistent policies, political will, money and time investment and patience are necessary along the way. Out of them, land issue need to handle first because unclear ownership of land and land use right are serious barriers for investors even more than the issue of high land price. The regular and reliable supply of electricity is also the next important factor to be tackled. Improvement in road, rail and port infrastructure and clear policy and rules of regional government to promote foreign investment is the third most important intervention to be done

A STUDY ON COMMERCIAL PERFORMANCE OF DOMESTIC AIRLINES IN MYANMAR

This paper aims to study the commercial performance of domestic airlines in Myanmar through identifying the environmental forces of domestic airlines, examining the marketing mix activity of domestic airlines and analyzing the effect of those environmental forces and marketing mix activities on commercial performance of domestic airlines in Myanmar. The study found that among environmental forces, technology factor is the most influencing factor on the commercial performance whereas all remaining factors also have influence on commercial performance except for political factor. Regarding marking mix activities, while all variables affect commercial performance of domestic airlines, the place (distribution) is the most influential one. Thus, domestic airlines should focus on direct and indirect sales distribution channels with the support of technology such as computer reservation system, global distribution system, internet web booking facilities, E-ticketing facilities can enhance the commercial performance of domestic airlines in Myanmar

The value of open-source clinical science in pandemic response: lessons from ISARIC

International audienc

Body mass index and complications following major gastrointestinal surgery: a prospective, international cohort study and meta-analysis.

AIM: Previous studies reported conflicting evidence on the effects of obesity on outcomes after gastrointestinal surgery. The aims of this study were to explore the relationship of obesity with major postoperative complications in an international cohort and to present a meta-analysis of all available prospective data. METHODS: This prospective, multicentre study included adults undergoing both elective and emergency gastrointestinal resection, reversal of stoma or formation of stoma. The primary end-point was 30-day major complications (Clavien-Dindo Grades III-V). A systematic search was undertaken for studies assessing the relationship between obesity and major complications after gastrointestinal surgery. Individual patient meta-analysis was used to analyse pooled results. RESULTS: This study included 2519 patients across 127 centres, of whom 560 (22.2%) were obese. Unadjusted major complication rates were lower in obese vs normal weight patients (13.0% vs 16.2%, respectively), but this did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.863) on multivariate analysis for patients having surgery for either malignant or benign conditions. Individual patient meta-analysis demonstrated that obese patients undergoing surgery for malignancy were at increased risk of major complications (OR 2.10, 95% CI 1.49-2.96, P < 0.001), whereas obese patients undergoing surgery for benign indications were at decreased risk (OR 0.59, 95% CI 0.46-0.75, P < 0.001) compared to normal weight patients. CONCLUSIONS: In our international data, obesity was not found to be associated with major complications following gastrointestinal surgery. Meta-analysis of available prospective data made a novel finding of obesity being associated with different outcomes depending on whether patients were undergoing surgery for benign or malignant disease