General Information
Mobile phones
There is a very limited internal mobile phone system in Yangon. Overseas phones
will NOT work and may be confiscated at the airport if found in your baggage.
You may be requested to leave phones in the safe keeping of the Customs for
collection on your departure
E-mail/Internet
In case you haven’t yet worked it out, Myanmar was one of the last countries in
the world where the Internet was banned. Until very recently that is! There was
a limited cyber-thaw when two public Internet cafés opened in Rangoon in May.
The local regime, which controls all media and communications in this country,
allowed the two cybercafes to open to much fanfare about the country now having
e-technology and being “a modern and developed nation.” You can now see people
(who have been carefully registered) trying to surf their way to a better
future. In theory, anyone can now get online in Myanmar but it is heavily
restricted by the firewalls on the government servers and other
government-imposed limitations (the only service provider is a quasi government
institution).
However don’t even think about trying to access a Hotmail account - the e-mail
service is blocked. Near the 48 terminals at the Surf ‘N Surf Internet cafe, the
rules are posted in fractured English: “We don’t provide any pornography, free
e-mail, anti-government Web site, due to strictly prohibited by authority
So this website has been put together by our friends on the outside. You can
imagine that this is not easy because we cannot get to view the website to see
what’s on it and nor can we edit the information. For those of you who take
access to the wonders of modern technology as a given, please give us a little
understanding when it comes to communicating with the outside world!
Banking Crisis
It probably will not affect you but you might like to understand some of the
weird and wonderful things that we have to endure in order to try and mount this
little event called the 6th Mekong/Indochina Hash.
Burma is currently in the midst of a crippling banking crisis. The banking
crisis started in February with the collapse of more than a dozen deposit-taking
companies. (None had licenses to actually take deposits.) Their owners had used
depositors’ funds to build up their own diversified business interests.
Depositors went unpaid and a panic ensued. The panic spread and soon runs by
depositors were under way at the larger licensed private banks.
Inflation in Myanmar has conservatively been estimated to be around 20 to 25
percent each year (some reports say as high as 50 percent). The military
government has demonetized the currency without warning at least three times in
recent years – without compensating the people who owned the “old” currency.
Traditionally, the Burmese have been wary of depositing money in banks, where
inflation erodes its value, preferring to invest their cash in things more
tangible. However many people have recently turned to the so-called private
banks that offer much higher interest rates than the state banks. Unfortunately,
these banks were more like a pyramid scheme than well-run commercial banks.
Between 1962 and 1988, the banks in Burma were all state-owned, and lent
primarily to state owned enterprises. After 1988, the declaration of a so-called
open market economy made way for private commercial banks but they were never
built on a strong capital base. It has been alleged that some banks in Burma are
virtual money laundering facilities and not real banks at all. The ruling junta
has never revealed the cash reserve ratio that banks legally need to operate but
it is thought that the cash reserve ratio is likely to be as low as 10 percent.
In the 1990s, loans were given to developers who invested in office buildings
and apartment complexes; in cottage industries, in the retail and wholesale
trades; and in ambitious investments in tourism. Hotel construction in Burma
went quickly from boom to bust as the Asian Tigers spiraled into financial
crisis in 1998 and an international boycott on tourism in Burma took ever deeper
effect. Since then, there have been recurrent runs on several commercial banks
when the banks have been unable to refund money to depositors.
The interest rates on offer seem impossibly high and they are, in fact,
unsustainable due to the lack of any real economic activity. Burma’s Central
Bank has been lending billions of Kyats to the commercial banks to get them over
the present liquidity crisis and has already started printing more money to
finance its deficits. Because Burma is so isolated and has only a few trade ties
with other countries, the situation is likely only to implode inwards. The
effect on neighboring countries and trading partners will, in all probability,
be minimal.
For ordinary people and businesses, the result is that withdrawals from banks
are limited to 50,000 Kyat (approximately US $50) per week – if they are lucky
enough to be one of the first 200 people in the queue each day that can get a
“token” that allows them to make a withdrawal. Some banks have ordered customers
with outstanding loans to repay 20 percent of their debt within a few days, thus
causing wholesale sell offs of things such as cars so that they can get the
money to give to the banks. Unfortunately no-one has any cash with which to buy
anything and so the price of cars has suddenly spiralled downwards. Businesses
can’t pay wages and can’t pay suppliers for goods. Cheques have been declared
illegal, as have the very few internal credit cards that were circulating. As a
consequence, businesses have closed and workers have been laid off.
As I said, none of this will probably affect you and it might have all blown
over by November. On the other hand things could just get worse …!