Foreign investment in Myanmar reaches US$7.76 bln

Myanmar absorbed 113.21 million U.S. dollars of contracted foreign investment in 2005, bringing the total to 7.76 billion dollars as of the end of the year since the country opened to such investment in late 1988, according to the latest official statistics.

Of the 26 countries and regions investing in Myanmar, Singapore led with 1.572 billion dollars, followed by Britain (1.431 billion) , Thailand (1.341 billion) and Malaysia (660.75 million), and the sectors, in which most foreign investment was injected, lined up as oil and natural gas, manufacturing, livestock and fishery, real estate, and hotels and tourism, according to the local Weeky Eleven News which quoted official sources.

From the regional point of view, the foreign investment was dominated by Southeast Asian countries with a total of 3.964 billion, in which Singapore stood first, followed by Thailand and Malaysia.

The second largest investor in terms of country group went to the West bloc countries with a total of 2.668 billion dollars, in which Britain stood atop, followed by France (470.37 million dollars), the United States (243.56 million) and the Netherlands ( 238 million).

The third largest investor group belongs to Asian countries and regions with 1.127 billion dollars in total, in which China's Hong Kong took 504.22 million dollars, followed by Chinese mainland ( 203.52 million), Japan (215.28 million) and South Korea (191.31 million).

Researchers noticed that there are at least three characteristics with Myanmar's foreign investment, the first being the fact that most of these foreign investments poured in the 1990s, the decade not long after the country opened to the outside world.

The second is that Myanmar is rich in land resources but foreign investment in agriculture, on which 60 percent of Myanmar 's population depend, amounted to merely 34.35 million dollars, and the third is that Myanmar is endowed with natural gas resources and the oil and gas sector has always been dominating the country's foreign investment.

With the possession of 19 onshore oil fields, Myanmar has a total of 87 trillion cubic feet (TCF) or 2.46 trillion cubic meters (TCM) of gas reserve and 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserve.

In the fiscal year of 2004-05 which ended in March, Myanmar produced 7.48 million barrels of crude oil and 10.69 billion cubic meters (BCM) of gas. Gas export from the two offshore gas fields of Yadana and Yetagun during the year went to 9.5 BCM, earning in total 1 billion US dollars mainly through the export of gas to Thailand under production sharing basis with foreign companies from Thailand, France, the United States, Britain, Malaysia and Japan.

South Korea's Daewoo, Thailand's PTTEP, Malaysia's Petronas, France's TOTAL, the U.S. UNOCAL, Britain's Premier and Japan's Nippon stood as major investors in Myanmar's oil and gas sector. Others are from Australia, Canada, China, Indonesia and India.

Observers here viewed that Myanmar still needs more foreign inevstment for the development of its economy and the modernization of the country.

Source: Xinhua