Transcript: Myanmar insights and opportunities
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Mark Wood ‒ Trade Commissioner Myanmar
Mark has been responsible for the Myanmar market since October 2012 and will officially head Austrade’s efforts there from May 2013, following the Australian Government’s decision earlier this year to establish a permanent Austrade office in Yangon. Mark speaks Korean and some French.
He joined Austrade’s Bangkok team as Trade Commissioner in April 2009 and was also the team leader of Austrade’s Automotive and Advanced Manufacturing industry team in South-East Asia for two years. He joined Austrade in 1986 and has served as Trade Commissioner in Seoul and Hong Kong prior to his appointment to Bangkok.
Transcript
>>Mark Wood: Myanmar’s a new economy or a new market for Australia after a long period of isolation, I guess, from the international business community. The market itself is relatively underdeveloped; you’ll find that some of the basic infrastructure that we expect to do business, like physical infrastructure, telecommunications, the financial system and so on are in a pretty poor state, so it’s quite a, I guess you could call it a frontier market. It does have a significant resources sector. So mining, oil and gas are areas where there is potential for Australian companies to work, develop business partnerships with local companies. We think there is potential in the tourism sector as well, hospitality, supply of food and beverages into that market. It’s definitely attracting a lot of attention from international tourists at the moment, so that’s a potential area as well.
It has been isolated for a long time; it hasn’t had exposure to the international economy, to international trade, international investment. They’re very, very keen to attract international investment that will create new jobs. They want to increase the skill level of their workforce; tourism is emerging as a major opportunity for them. So there’s lots of opportunities that are coming through that basic trend of nation building that’s happening at the moment.
The legal framework in Myanmar is still largely based on British Colonial law. There’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment around regulations that need to be upgrade, the telecommunications law, the financial institutions law, the investment law itself has just been reissued and regulations to support that were approved last month. So there’s a lot happening around regulatory reform.
The critical challenge, I guess, for many companies is just access to information so that they can understand what the risks and the challenges actually are. If you’re trying to make a business case doing --- for entering the market or for doing trade there, you need to access to market information and that’s quite problematic.
Austrade can help to get that information because we have contacts directly with the relevant ministries in Myanmar; we can get that information. Finding the right partners is another area in Myanmar, finding companies that are capable of doing business internationally that have the right systems in place to support international business, and I think probably the third area that we can assist most is the using our badge of government to make the right connections in the market.
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