The end of US sanctions will make it far easier for e-commerce players to sell their products from Myanmar on platforms such as Google Play, a Myanmar developer for the company has said.
Ko Ye Lin Wai, an authorized developer for Google in Myanmar, also pledged at a tech development conference earlier this month to fix weaknesses in Google’s Maps and Translate services that have bugged users in Myanmar.
Under financial sanctions, Singapore became a hub of outbound money for Myanmar developers selling their products on the platform, but accessing other parts of the global financial market remained a challenge.
“We have so many constraints for money transfers when we sell our products on e-commerce websites like Play Store,” Ko Ye Lin Wai told Myanmar Business Today.
“Now sanctions on Myanmar have been lifted, cooperation between banks for outbound money transfers will make the development of IT-related businesses easier,” he added.
Payment restrictions have been a major barrier for Myanmar IT product makers hoping to break into the international market, but the end of sanctions will solve this problem. And as internet penetration continues to explode it is expected more app developers will enter the market.
Ko Ye Lin Wai added that the push for e-government could benefit IT developers, as it will encourage standardization, especially in the use of fonts.
“E-government is not just about setting up websites. It’s about reducing paper, increasing online services and speeding up processes,” he said. “We have to upgrade the coding to improve e-government in line with international norms. We have to use Unicode as a common font. That makes sense for sustainability.”
Making Unicode the standard will foster local tech innovation and help to penetrate international markets, he added, while also improving the Myanmar language version of Google’s search engine.
He also admitted that Google’s services for Myanmar still “have weaknesses”. Google Translate commonly gets basic words and phrases wrong and Maps is often incomplete or inaccurate.
“We have already noticed that Google’s translation and mapping services still have weaknesses for users, not only in Myanmar but also in other countries they have these kinds of errors,” he said.
Source: Myanmar Business Today
