Myanmar

Foreign direct investment (FDI) can be defined as cross-border investment by a resident in one economy with the objective of obtaining a lasting interest in another economy. A foreign investor can be an individual, an incorporated or unincorporated public or private enterprise (e.g., a transnational corporation), a government, or a subsidiary of an enterprise outside the home country of the enterprise.

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is coming into effect in December 2015, although its full implementation will take a number of years. The AEC presents both challenges and opportunities for firms in the region. The main purpose of this publication is to serve as a resource to businesses, particularly in Myanmar and the other CLMV countries, in navigating the coming changes. It is therefore useful to begin by briefly placing in a historical context the emergence of the AEC as the next and key phase in the evolution of regional economic integration that began with ASEAN. It is also useful to see the AEC within the broader context of different stages of regional economic integration, in both theory and practice, and therefore potential lessons from other such efforts, such as the European Union (and the Eurozone) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This can point toward possible future directions for the AEC and its implications for participating economies, as regional integration evolves in coming years. Discussion of the evolution of ASEAN and AEC also provides a backdrop to the discussions in Section I of particular AEC policies and Section II of implications for business.

A century ago, the world confronted the single largest drug problem ever to have been recorded: Chinese opium addiction. By a variety of means, this problem was almost entirely resolved by the middle of the 20th Century.” In recent years, unfortunately, there has been a resurgence of opiate use in China. Opium in still consumed, but the main opiate problem in the 21st century involves the more refined form of the drug: heroin.

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was officially launched with the signing of the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint in 2007, based on a set of principles outlined in the 1997 document, ASEAN Vision 2020. The AEC’s fundamental goals are to foster economic integration, promote economic competitiveness, and ensure more equitable economic development among member states. Since the Blueprint was signed, considerable progress has been made in implementing the AEC’s objectives. Although a number of observers question whether all measures will be fully in place by the AEC’s official launch date of 31 December 2015, the AEC will have an impact on the ASEAN member states—an impact that will continue to grow in the coming years after implementation.