Economy

In what is considered to be the last frontier market in South-east Asia, the pace of business-friendly reforms is quickening, with a view to becoming a preferred destination of investment in a region that is experiencing the effects of a global repositioning in trade and manufacturing. Following decades of military rule that maintained a...

The innovative tech scene in South-east Asia is quickly garnering international attention. For instance, a jolt occurred in the international tech industry in early 2018 when the Singapore-based ride-hailing app Grab announced that it would take control of the South-east Asian operations of its US-based competitor – and global first-mover –...

As the world’s nations and businesses become increasingly interconnected, so too does the flow of global migration. According to the OECD’s “International Migration Outlook 2018”, in 2017 some 258m people resided in a country other than the one they were born in, and more than 5m foreign-born persons settled in OECD countries. The flow of...

Myanmar is now one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia Pacific, with a key geostrategic location, abundant natural resources and a youthful population underpinning its progress. It is also a country that has achieved much in a relatively short period of time, after only setting out on the path of liberalisation and democratisation back in...

In 2019 Myanmar’s Internal Revenue Department (IRD) pushed forward with two major reforms – a new tax law and a new tax administration law. The first of the two, the Union Tax Law (UTL 2019), passed by Parliament in September 2019, drew headlines for granting tax amnesty to citizens with undisclosed sources of income. The law brought other...