On 24 May 2021, the Electric Power Generation Enterprise (“EPGE”) under the Ministry of Electricity and Energy of Myanmar (“MOEE”) launched its second solar tender (Tender No. EPGE PV 02/ 2021-2022) in the same fashion as it did its first ever solar tender (Tender No. EPGE PV 01/ 2019-2020) in last year. The new tender […]

The tender launched in May by the Electric Power Generation Enterprise (“EPGE”) for 30 sites totaling 1,060MW in Myanmar made quite a splash and was even subject to an unsuccessful claim by the newly created Myanmar Competition Commission for illegally discriminating against foreign bidders.   Bids were due on 17 July 2020 with reportedly a total of 155 proposals submitted. With controversies now behind them, hopeful bidders awaiting […]

The Economic Relief Plan published the government on 27 April 2020 has put the infrastructure sector at the forefront of the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. Various government ministries are requested to do the following before the end of 2020:  Investment approvals: Approvals by the government and the Myanmar Investment Commission will be fast-tracked […]

電気がなければ仕事ができない。道路、港、鉄道がなければ移動できない。 電気などのインフラはミャンマーの大きな経済成長と国民繁栄への扉を開ける鍵である。電力事業、有料道路事業、水道事業、鉄道事業などへの投資を危険に晒したいと考える投資家はいない ハイライト 先ず、ミャンマーの評判をあげること。 契約を履行し支払いを実行する外国投資家を保証する。 政府間レベル案件の支援を保証する「アンブレラノート」の利用。 最大限に個人投資を増やす。 取引条件交渉のやり方は変わらなければならない。 追記

On 7 November 2019 the Central Bank of Myanmar issued announcement confirming that a third round of foreign bank licensing will be initiated and opened to foreign banks with representative offices in Myanmar (the “Announcement”). Pursuant to the Announcement, foreign banks will be able to apply either for a branch or for a subsidiary license, […]

Under section 43 of the Myanmar Companies Law 2017 (“MCL”), an overseas corporation is not allowed to ‘carry on business’ in Myanmar unless it has registered its commercial presence with the Directorate of Investment & Company Administration (“DICA”). The central concept of ‘carrying on business in Myanmar’ has, unfortunately, not been defined in the MCL. […]

လျှပ်စစ်စွမ်းအင်မရှိဘဲ မည်သည့်အလုပ်ကိုမျှ လုပ်ကိုင်၍ မရပါ။ လမ်း၊ ဆိပ်ကမ်းနှင့် မီးရထား သံလမ်းများ မရှိဘဲ မည်သည့် နေရာကိုမျှ သွား၍ မရပါ။ လျှပ်စစ်စွမ်းအင် အပါအဝင် အခြေခံ အဆောက်အအုံများသည် မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံ၏ စီးပွားရေး အလားအလာကောင်းများ နှင့် အများပြည်သူတို့၏ အကျိုးစီးပွားကို လမ်းဖွင့်ပေးမည့် သော့ချက်ဖြစ်သည်။ ကောက်နှုတ်ချက် ၁။ ယခုချက်ချင်းပင် အသေးစား စီမံကိန်းများကို အလျင်အမြန် ပြီးမြောက်အောင် ဆောင်ရွက်၍ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဂုဏ်သတင်းကို ပိုမို ကောင်းမွန်အောင် ဆောင်ရွက် ရန် လိုပါသည်။၂။ အစိုးရအနေဖြင့် စာချုပ်ပါ ဝတ္တရား များကို ဖော်ဆောင်ပြီး မိမိပေး ဆောင်ရမည့် အဖိုးအခ များကို ပေးဆောင်မည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း နိုင်ငံခြား ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံသူများကို အာမခံရန် လိုအပ်ပါသည်။၃။ […]

Not much works without electricity, and not much moves without roads, ports and railways to move it on. Infrastructure, including electricity, is the obvious key to unlocking the huge economic potential of Myanmar and the road to prosperity for its people. Highlights of this note We need to improve Myanmar’s reputation by fast-tracking and completing […]

In another exciting development in the Myanmar financial regulatory landscape, foreign life and non-life insurers can form joint ventures with local life and non-life insurers respectively. In addition, up to 3 (three) licenses will be granted to foreign life insurers to operate as wholly-owned subsidiaries. Therefore, foreign insurers will now play a much more active […]

Myanmar Companies Law 2017 (“MCL”) has introduced a special corporate approval procedure for “related party transactions” into the Myanmar legal system. While such type of transactions are often subject to particular scrutiny under corporate governance laws in many jurisdictions, there are a number of peculiarities to be followed under the MCL, and they are summarised […]

For the first time, the Myanmar government is to open new registration offices and assign registrars for condominiums.  This is an important sign that the government is serious about reforming the property market, with both Myanmar people and foreigners now able to obtain an ownership title of units registered as condominiums. The Condominium Law and […]

In June the President signed a new notification issuing guidelines to government departments and organizations in relation to the execution of international convention and ‘commercial contracts.’ The notification was published in the gazette last month, and aims to codify existing internal governmental practices. The Notification contains a number of new elements that local and foreign […]

The slogan of the Dutch tax authorities is “We can’t make it more fun, but we can certainly make it easier”. A fair, easy, predictable and efficient tax system is an important factor in attracting foreign investment. Highlights Speed up the signing of double taxation agreements Prioritize implementing advance tax rulings for investors so that […]

On the 15 June 2018 the Ministry of Construction (“MOC”), in partnership with VDB Loi, organized a landmark conference on Public Private Partnerships for Toll Roads in Myanmar. Highlights Overview Reports Panels First Step on the Road to Making the Yangon Expressway Project a Success

The Union Ministry of Construction, in coordination with the Union Ministry of Transport and Communication, and the Yangon Regional Government seeks to implement its first ever elevated expressway, the Yangon Elevated Expressway. Highlights Situation of existing toll roads in Myanmar Myanmar has a lot of experience with toll road bot contracts, but not the right […]

Although others forms also exist, most port terminals with private interests in Myanmar are “Landlord Ports”. That is to say, the port is leased to the private sector for it to operate the port services, for which it invests capital – generally through a concession. Highlights What are the assets of a Target in the […]

Despite their high profile presence in Myanmar, there are relatively few Japanese invested energy projects slated as a priority project in Myanmar. For example, the four recently announced LNG/Gas to Power projects which received approval from the Government have no Japanese investors at this stage. This was one of the issues discussed at a recent […]

As Myanmar increasingly becomes a place to do business to both domestic entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike, Myanmar’s labor compliance framework has recently taken stimulus with the re-working of Notification 1/2015 on the Employment Contract Template. The result? Notification 140/2017 of 28 August 2017 (the “Notification”). The Notification has new provisions dealing with how an employment contract […]

The Ministry of Construction released the long anticipated Condominium Rules in December (the “Rules”) which clarifies much of the ambiguity left by the Condominium Law 2016 (the “Law”). Since December, various stakeholders have provided feedback on the rules to the Department of Urban Housing and Development (“DUHD”), and the DUHD has proposed several amendments to […]

MIC has issued an invitation welcoming foreign and Myanmar citizen investors to invest in Logistics Services at the major cities of logistics and trading hub. The sectors of investment  included in the invitation are Dry Port Services, Bonded Warehouse Services, High-way Bus and Freight Terminals and Warehouses & Wholesale Centers. It is also written that […]