A Myanmar agriculture magnate has invited Filipino firms to explore potential investment opportunities in the country. Myanmar's Yoma Strategic Holdings Co. Ltd (YSHCL) Agriculture Group Chairman, Tin Htut Oo, assured Filipino companies that, starting next year, Myanmar will be a highly favorable investment destination in Asia with its new aggressive market-oriented foreign policy.
A new law in Myanmar now allows companies to be 100-percent foreign owned.
Speaking as an awardee of the D.L.Umali Award of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), Oo said this policy will already have a set of implementing rules by 2017.
He said that investors could invest in coconut and banana plantation in his country.
"You are successful in coconut [in which] you have downstream businesses. We're not utilizing coconut as much as the Philippines. It's not a commercial crop. Filipino entrepreneurs can turn our industry [into a commercial one]," he further said.
SEARCA Director Gil Saguiguit Jr. said in the same briefing that both Myanmar and the Philippines can have partnerships that can take advantage of the prevailing ASEAN economic integration.