If you are asked to state one unique profession within Myanmar, fortune tellers might come into your mind. People here consult them whenever fortunes do not favour their circumstances. Yet most are simply prying on people’s misfortune to earn themselves a living. For how would Myanmar look in ten years time, we will not seek the answers in the soothsayers parlours at the base of pagodas. Instead, we will look at the current state of affairs objectively and scientifically to come up with a possible outcome on the path that the country will proceed.
As Xi Jinpeng has stated in his Governance of China book, the development is like a boat. Once you miss it, the boat is never going to come back for you. Myanmar has missed the boat to an enormous opportunity to progress from 2017 until now. After the stellar growth years of 2012 – 2015, the people chose an incompetent leader who spoke well on stage and committed economic suicide by focusing on nonsense and lack of focus on things that matter for economic development. Myanmar has become the poorest country in ASEAN in 2017 (World Bank data) and has never recovered from that infamous standing. It has fallen even behind the hyper populated Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, because of the economic mismanagement under Su Kyi era, instead of credible investments in infrastructure, Myanmar was left to dwell on the remains of the past infrastructure, a significant portion of which was built before 1960s. Her administration most visible infra projects are not railways, highways, bridges or roads, but ‘Welcome to xxxCity’, signs put up in every town and city across the country.
FDI has fallen well short of what other ASEAN countries of similar population are garnering. Vietnam and Thailand are receiving inward investments in billions of $, while the FDIs into Myanmar is still at miserable double digit millions on average for the past four years.
Short of employment opportunities, most educated and capable has gone abroad. Think of 5-10 million strong Myanmar diaspora in Thailand. You can go into almost all shops and speak Burmese and they would bring out one staff who can communicate with you. Because of lack of investment in infrastructure and diminishing FDI, Myanmar workers are deprived of the skills needed to earn increased wages in a competitive global environment. They have no experience with latest technologies nor are they well verse in productivity in an office environment. The route learning that the universities taught them only prepares them to memorise. They had not learn how to self learn or even google search, let alone use Ai or programming. Even word processing skills are elementary.
Years of not focusing on production and exports have led to continuous budget deficits that added to the national debt burdens. If you are not producing anything you cannot become rich. If you think of the products that Myanmar produce, other than natural resources, not many things would come to your mind. CMP perhaps. Agriculture products in unprocessed form. That’s it. How can we possibly come out of the poverty trap!
Recent attempts at price controls over foreign currency, gold, rice, edible oil, etc., are fulfilling their intended purpose. Inflation has not gone down. Due to political instability and losses on the military front, local business confidence is in the trenches. No one is opening new shops, renting new premises, but just buying gold and $ and amassing them, adding no value to economic growth. Hence stagflation sets in. It is not going out of fashion any time soon.
People are scared. All cash the rich in Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw have, are being directed towards the great escape to a foreign land. The well to do in the second tier towns have used up their buffer funds to relocate the whole families into the safe heavens of Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon. Who would have thought that Lashio would fall, with the largest regional military command (RMC) centre as well as an airforce? Who would then give the definite assurance that nothing will happen to whatever you own in Mandalay? Who would guarantee that Mandalay would not experience what has happened to Lashio. Once the artillery shells start to rain down upon the city, it would be too late to move out in an orderly manner by then.
With losses of major territories on most states and some divisions, this civil conflict is not likely to end in the foreseeable future. That would commit a lot of national income into the war efforts, depriving other much needed areas of their budget allocations, further downgrading the education system, public healthcare and infrastructure development.
Which country are we starting to look like?
A country where the local wages remain stagnant. A country where the poor remains under the poverty line and extreme poor are forced to eat out of rubbish. A country still at civil war in some significant parts of the country. A country that relies on its own diaspora form overseas transferring back $ to augment their national income. A country with poor infrastructure, slums and with a bad safety record. A country where their diaspora was doing most menial jobs overseas ranging from maids to cleaners to nurses to construction workers.
Can you imagine that country? Its name starts with ‘P’.
Myanmar is not there yet in totality, but on the verge of becoming one. But unless we shake up and shape up quickly, we will be that country with all the above characteristics, in less than half a decade.
Consider yourself warned my fellow citizens!
