Myanmar government has invited a Bangladeshi expert to set up the first commodity exchange in Myanmar.
According to a letter, the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration under the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development of the Government of Myanmar has granted a permit to launch Myanmar International Commodity Exchange Limited, an initiative by Bangladeshi expert on capital market Wali-ul-Maroof Matin.
Mr Matin is currently the Managing Director of Dhaka-based Alliance Capital Asset Management Limited. Mr Matin left Dhaka Friday for Myanmar.
Once operational, this would be the first commodity exchange in Myanmar, a resource-rich Southeast Asian country of about fifty five million people and which is preparing to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014.
Since the 2010 election, the first general election in 20 years, the government of Myanmar has embarked on a series of reforms to direct the country towards liberal democracy, a mixed economy and reconciliation, although the questioning of the motives that underpin such reforms has not ceased.
The series of reforms includes the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, establishment of the National Human Rights Commission, granting of general amnesties for more than 200 political prisoners, new labour laws that permit labour unions and strikes, relaxation of press censorship, and the regulation of currency practices. Because of these recent economic reforms by the government and the enactment of a new Foreign Investment Law signed by the President Thein Sein, Myanmar is gradually turning into a destination of choice for many foreign investors.
‘I saw the opportunity and the prospect of setting up and managing profitably a world-class commodity exchange in Myanmar and the result is this permission by the government of Myanmar to go ahead’,? said Maroof Matin, who has been pursuing his application to the then SEC of Bangladesh, now BSEC, since early 2008 to set up a commodity exchange in Bangladesh.
Mr. Maroof expects BSEC to approve a commodity derivatives exchange very soon.
Source: Financial Express (Bangladesh)
