Myanmar,reconsidered

Myanmar, as you know, is military-based country. In recent years, there is some good news from Myanmar – one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. The situation of politics is better than ten years ago because of the internal and external pressure. Releasing of political prisoners and also Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010 until the election in April 2012 guarantees the improved political scenario. Parliament also passed the law to help encourage investment from foreign investor. The United State, E.U., and Australia started easing sanction. World Bank and E.U. have already opened their office while Dawei port is constructing assiduously. China – one of the greatest border trading partner – does not stop constructing the infrastructure in connecting Yunnan to other countries in Indochina region. Consequently, the world is now glaring at Myanmar. It is the fact that Myanmar has potential to become leader of Southeast Asia, economically, socially, and politically. This paper, “Myanmar; reconsidered”, deliberately explains about Myanmar economy. However, it’s linked to politics and society as well. Contents of this paper have many dimensions including the country fact, economic health, trade, welfare, labor migration, and policy suggestion. Initially, when you consider Myanmar, you may think about life’s deprivation, conflict, and military – controlled; however, Myanmar has a long line and there is some background that you should know before judging. Also, some statistics indicate the outstanding growth rate in various fields, for instance, Gross Domestic Product, Human Development Index, Export Index Value. So, this paper will reconsider Myanmar in many dimensions. Nevertheless, in collecting data, it is difficult because there are many sources of information and those are different (for example, GDP from World Bank is not similar to Government Office even the same recent year). It is hard for me to select only one source of a ton of data for analyzing.