Myanmar economy

With the civil war showing no sign of ending, the country's economic prospects will remain "bleak" in 2025-26.

Myanmar’s GDP is expected to contract by 1 percent in the fiscal year ending March 2025, a downward revision from the previous projection of modest growth.

Ethnic armed groups opposed to the military now control trade routes accounting for 91 percent of the country's overland trade with China.

How the "best laid plans" of Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government went awry.

International financial institutions say the country's economy is stagnating. In reality, it is going backwards.

The World Bank predicts the country's economy to grow by 1 percent this fiscal year, but even that seems optimistic in the current circumstances.

The massive gap between the black market and official rates for the kyat has created lucrative opportunities for arbitrage.

According to the global body, 18.6 million people in Myanmar will need humanitarian assistance in 2024 – a nineteen-fold increase since the 2021 coup.

Economy deteriorates further as fighting escalates, blocking trade routes with China and other neighboring countries.

Nearly three years after the military's seizure of power, opium production has become more widespread and productive.

Despite a string of recent cryptocurrency scandals, the country's resistance forces have a lot to gain from pushing toward fintech's frontiers.

"The difference to the past," says economist Sean Turnell, "is that this junta does not seem to even pretend anymore that it has any sort of vision for Myanmar."

The policy is an attempt to arrest the slide in the kyat, which has depreciated sharply since the 2021 coup.

In its latest Myanmar Economic Monitor, the Bank predicted that the country will not return to pre-COVID-19 economic levels until at least 2027.

The bank, which was awarded a banking license in Myanmar in 2014, said it was withdrawing due to the country's "increasing operational complexity."

The Financial Action Task Force said the move was a result of the country's persistent failures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

The military's seizure of power has created a climate in which even carrying out human rights due diligence is next to impossible.

News that the Doha-based company is seeking to offload its Myanmar unit follows the exit of Norway’s Telenor earlier this year.

The risk assessment group Fitch Solutions predicts that the country's lost economic output won't be recouped until 2028.

While international tourism may never fully recover, domestic travel is on the rise despite widespread insecurity.

The move is designed to strengthen further the junta's control of foreign currency flows, amid Myanmar's full-spectrum economic crisis.

Under new central bank rules, all local holders of foreign currency will have to convert them to Myanmar kyats.

Given its financial ties to Myanmar, Singapore's cooperation is vital if the world is to choke off the military junta's revenue streams.

The World Wildlife Fund claims that illegal online transactions of endangered wildlife products rose 74 percent in 2021.