How Myanmar's Economic Reforms After 2010 Got Started
- Lex Rieffel
- Jun 2
- 2 min read
We may never know why the Myanmar military decided to introduce the bold economic reforms during the administration of President Thein Sein from 2011 to 2016. I started focusing on Myanmar's economy in 2009, visiting the country roughly every six months for the next ten years.
I was fortunate in making friends at the outset with one of Myanmar's best known economists. He introduced me to key members of "Myanmar Egress", a nonprofit created to educate young Myanmar men and women in doing social science research. At the same time, however, these members were working visibly and invisibly to persuade the military rulers of Myanmar to open up and build a modern market economy, make peace with the ethnic minorities it had been trying to suppress since independence in 1948, and create a role in the government for the democratic opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
I was also fortunate in making the acquaintance with the head of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). She arranged the historic visit to Myanmar in December 2009 of Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate on the faculty of Columbia University in New York City. This visit, facilitated by Myanmar Egress, was arguably the first concrete step toward the economic reforms implemented after the 2010 election that led to a decade of impressive economic growth--all brought to a bloody end by the military coup on 1 February 2021.
I wrote this "historical note" because I was in a unique position to write it and nobody else had given this story the attention I believed it deserved.
Full PDF: click to download. My "Historical Note" begins on pg. 4 of this PDF.
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