International Monetary Fund should play a role in monitoring Myanmar’s policy stance
Tokyo – A meeting of Myanmar’s key international creditors agreed Thursday on the importance of supporting the country’s overhauls, though they didn’t reach a comprehensive deal to reduce the emerging Southeast Asian nation’s debt burden, Japan’s finance ministry said. More…
Myanmar began a manged float of its currency, the kyat, on 1 April.
Myanmar’s successful by-elections and Aung San Suu Kyi’s landslide victory deservedly captured the international headlines a fortnight ago. But those headlines overshadowed an equally pathbreaking economic development. The day the preliminary election results were announced, the government held Myanmar’s first foreign exchange auction at which the U.S. dollar was traded at 818 kyat. The official rate had been 8.5. The challenge now is to keep the reform momentum going without causing macroeconomic or political instability. More…
Reposted from The Straits Times
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
YANGON – Here in Myanmar (Burma), where political change has been numbingly slow for a half-century, a new leadership is trying to embrace rapid transition from within. The government has freed political prisoners, held elections (with more on the way), begun economic reform, and is intensively courting foreign investment. More…
