Thammasat University students interested in ASEAN studies, economics, business, political science, Myanmar, history, sociology, democracy, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 18 November Zoom webinar on Principles, Plans, Performance and Problems: What Do Economic Reforms Mean in Myanmar?
The event, on Monday, 18 November 2024 at 1pm Bangkok time, is presented by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of the economy of Myanmar.
Students are welcome to register for the event at this link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9317309601862/WN_80M2fp_7SP689eAq0nnjig#/registration
The event website explains:
After a second election win in 2020, Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD) government planned to build on the groundwork laid during its term in office since 2016, for liberal economic reforms that would enable Myanmar to catch up with the economic performance of its neighbours and peers in the region. Despite challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, Myanmar’s economy was projected for a strong recovery in 2021-22.
The aftermath of the military coup on 1 February 2021, however, set Myanmar’s economy on a different path. Though elements of the NLD’s economic plans were recast into the State Administration Council regime’s economic recovery plan, the economic performance of decade prior to the 2021 coup has been reversed.
The present economic climate in Myanmar now presents further challenges for the future, with people bearing the brunt of the numerous policy changes post-coup. The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute Myanmar Studies Programme invites Professor Sean Turnell to update his insights shared in 2023 on the present and projected situation of Myanmar’s economy and issues arising for future economic reforms including the implications of international responses and the consequences for the people of Myanmar.
About the Speaker
Sean Turnell is a Senior Fellow in the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute. He has been a Senior Economic Analyst at the Reserve Bank of Australia, a Professor of Economics at Macquarie University, and a policy adviser to several international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He served as special economic consultant to Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD) government from 2016 to 2021. Sean was a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute at the time of the February 2021 coup, when he was imprisoned alongside Myanmar’s democratic leadership. He was released and deported in November 2022.
The TU Library collection includes a number of books by and about Dr. Turnell.
In August, The Irrawaddy reported:
Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of Reform in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar
By Sean Turnell
Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2024, 128 Pages
Although it is a small book with fewer than 150 pages, Best Laid Plans presents the insider perspective of Sean Turnell, who worked as “Special Economic Consultant” to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on economic reform in the National League for Democracy (NLD) era. However, Turnell makes very clear that he was never an employee of the NLD government but subcontracted by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide advice to the Myanmar government.
The late scholar Naing Ko Ko described Myanmar’s economic reform period as the emergence of “Suukyinomics” built on the rule of law and institutional economics with two broad plans: the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan (MSDP) and the Myanmar Investment Promotion Plan (MIPP).
In his book, Turnell covers four key elements of Myanmar’s economic reform: banking sector reform; microfinance, mobile money and markets; escaping China’s debt trap; and an attempt to create economic resistance during the COVID-19 period. Apart from that, he highlights the roles of the three most committed reformers—U Winston Set Aung, U Bo Bo Nge and U Min Ye Paing Hein.
Reformers, financial institutions and development partners
Turnell explains the four main goals of the MSDP. The first was to give special attention to establishing a “functional federalism”, outlining how equalization payments and fiscal transfer might be employed to unite the country’s states and regions. The other three goals were steadying Myanmar’s chronically unstable macroeconomy, transformational economic growth led by the private sector, and building human capital through improvements in Myanmar’s health and education systems.
One of the first acts of the reformers, Turnell observes, was to establish the Development Assistance Coordination Unit. He highlights two important multilateral financial institutions operating in Myanmar—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—and their policy advice, and Myanmar’s three most useful bilateral development partners, the US, the UK and Australia.
As Turnell observes, the US provided macroeconomic and monetary advice; the Bank of England was a generous source of advice and connection to global capital markets; and Australia’s aid to Myanmar concentrated on education. Australia was also a steady source of expertise in a range of economic areas, from public sector reform to infrastructure financing.
“My own position as adviser to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD government was the product of Australian Aid.”
Apart from development partners from the West, Turnell notes that not many Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries provided assistance for Myanmar’s reform except for Singapore. Japan provided more hard cash than any other bilateral partner. South Korea was another key player in the reforms through the creation of the Myanmar Development Institute, modeled on the Korean Development Institute.
The roles of Russia and China
Turnell didn’t observe any Russian involvement in the early days of the NLD government but later noticed Russia’s ties with the Myanmar military, which Moscow supplied with advanced weapons such as fighter aircraft. It also provided training and other support to Myanmar’s military in cyber warfare. “In terms of our economic reform efforts, Russia was a malign influence throughout,” Turnell observes.
In his view, China was “the most secretive and troublesome of all the donor countries” in the NLD era. He writes, “China’s assistance was mostly in the form of self-interested ‘mega projects’ that were at least partly about securing for itself key resources, trade routes, strategically located ports and other geo-politically important assets.”
Turnell prepared a memo for the State Counselor in 2018 regarding China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, stating that “BRI funding was invariably in the form of loans rather than grants; that these loans were usually at commercial rates of interest; were repayable in ‘hard currencies’, usually US dollars regardless of whether any part of the loan itself was issued in dollars; required some sort of sovereign guarantee irrespective of actual counterparties; and were usually employed in funding capital-intensive projects that created little in the way of local employment but were highly profitable for Chinese State-owned enterprises.”
[…]
Escaping China’s debt trap
Myanmar’s economic reformers were well aware that the cost of US$10 billion for the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project in Rakhine State—part of China’s BRI—was much too big for Myanmar’s needs and the debt too large for Myanmar to cope with, Turnell observes. “Kyaukphyu unquestionably made strategic sense to China (a port on the Indian Ocean; an alternative to the Malacca Straits) and brought certain economic benefits too. For Myanmar, it made little sense.”
[…]
Turnell’s book explains not only the rough road faced by Myanmar’s economic reform, but also the conundrums of democratic decentralization under an elected civilian government as the military sought to maintain the status quo.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)