The country is bordered in the west and north by Bangladesh and India, the northeast and east by China and to the southeast and south by Laos and Thailand. The shoreline stretches 2000 kilometers from the border with Bangladesh in the north to the border with Thailand in the south. It is a big country and relatively under-populated compared to some of its neighbors like India and China.
After a brief visit to Myanmar, it is obvious that the area is blessed with natural resources. It is rich in many mineable minerals and apparently has some decent deposits of natural gas that are economic to produce. I am not sure though if these gas rich areas were onshore or offshore hydrocarbon basins. Myanmar also boasts copious gemstone reserves, which were slightly dented by my dear wife this past week.
However, the people are poor because they lack a modern industrialized economy. The industries that I witnessed in Vietnam and Singapore were not evident in Myanmar. And you only have to go to your closet to count how many clothing labels you see from Myanmar as opposed to Vietnam or Thailand. The sad part about this is that it appears that Myanmar has been exporting its resources for refining elsewhere. What larger trucks that do exist on the highway system seem to be loaded with Teak logs and headed to the ports. As shown in one of the pictures below, teak logs were stacked up next to our cruise-ship ready for export. They must be denuding the old growth forests of all of the big teak trees and then moving them out of the country to lumber mills and secondary industrial businesses in other countries like Singapore and Thailand where the raw materials are refined.
So the current economy looks like it is based on primary industries. Farming and fishing seemed to be the largest employers. Of note though is the fact that I did not see a farm tractor or a motorized fishing boat anywhere. All farming that I saw is done by hand, stooped over in the paddy or field. Merchants carry their produce to market on bicycles or on carts pulled by water buffalo or brahma cows.
The transportation infrastructure consists of some pretty bumpy and windy roads and a narrow gauge railway between the cities, which appears to be mainly a passenger service. There are very few cars or motorbikes. Most people get around on bicycles or private buses that are packed to the bursting point. Many of these vehicles will have four or five people standing on the back bumper and holding on for dear life. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of one of those ‘buses’ but believe me they are everywhere.
In my opinion, all of the above adds up to one thing. Myanmar is great place to invest. Why would I make such a bold statement? Well, there several reasons for taking that position as follows:
1. The country has just become a democracy and if it holds the monopolies on things like cell phones and the internet will fail;
2. The country still uses the British system of land ownership which is essentially the same as the system in Canada;
3. India and China need places to invest too and they have plenty of capital to employ. I’m sure China would like to dominate the ownership of those natural gas fields if it doesn’t already have a majority position; and.
4. If Myanmar is going to chop down all there teak trees anyways, why not build a saw mill and employ some furniture makers in a secondary industry that is in Myanmar or run the natural gas through a petro-chemical plant there and put some engineers to work. Our guide did tell us that the workforce was well-educated.
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