Construction & Real Estate

Myanmar is being hailed as the next Vietnam, which kicked off a multi-decade construction boom when it opened up to the world in the 1990s. With much of Myanmar’s housing stock in poor shape and cities expected to grow rapidly, demand for middle-class urban apartments will be a powerful driver of growth. And with the country’s limited domestic capacity and wide range of construction needs, there are plentiful opportunities for foreign investors, international construction firms, and sellers of construction equipment materials. The biggest recent legal change for the industry was a reform to the Foreign Investment Law in 2012 that allows foreign investors in real estate to operate without domestic joint venture partners through build-operate-transfer lease agreements with the government. But developers have a long way to go to catch up with demand, and the pace of development is still restrained by the limited availability of prime land and domestic financing. This chapter contains interviews with U Kyaw Lwin, Minister of Construction; and U Aung Zaw Naing, Group CEO, Shwe Taung Development Co.