Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Myanmar fell by more than 60 percent year on year between April 1 and July 31 to about US$ 467 million, according to figures released by the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA).
FDI in Myanmar totaled US$ 1.22 billion in the same period last year, according to DICA.
Almost all the FDI in the four-month period came from Singapore and China—slightly more than US$ 335 million and about US$ 124, respectively. Other sources of FDI during the April-July period included Taiwan, Hong Kong SAR, India, Korea, Samoa, the UK, and the United States (listed in order of amount).
More than US$ 317 million of the FDI during the four-month period went into the electricity sector, US$ 77 million went into the transport and telecom sectors, and over US$ 48 million went into manufacturing, DICA said.
FDI also plunged 60 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same quarter in 2022. In the first quarter of 2023, FDI totaled US$ 178 million compared to US$ 402 million in the first quarter of 2022, which also saw a dramatic year-on-year decline. FDI totaled US$ 908 million in the first quarter of 2021.
The World Bank said in its Myanmar Economic Monitor for this year that although Myanmar showed signs of a pick-up in domestic investment in the second half of 2022, foreign investment remained weak. It tentatively forecast that GDP might expand 3 percent this year, but said the country’s overall GDP would still be 13 percentage points less than it was in 2019.
This April, the first month of the junta’s 2023-24 fiscal year, Myanmar received only one FDI project, worth US$ 3.7 million, in the manufacturing sector.
Foreign investors are not only shunning the country due to the political instability, economists say. The junta’s mismanagement of the financial sector and poor infrastructure, including a desperately insufficient supply of electricity, are also deterring FDI, economists say.
