With the emergence and spread of COVID-19, the sale of protective masks and antiseptic disinfectant have greatly increased to the extent that it has become difficult to buy them at a reasonable price.

After decades of highly controversial land acquisitions for public purposes, Myanmar turns a new page by passing the Land Acquisition, Resettlement, and Rehabilitation Law 2019 (Law no. 24/2019, referred to herein as the “LARR 2019”). Highlights of this note How does the new process work? The proposal required for starting the land acquisition process has […]

On 15 November 2019, the Central Bank of Myanmar (“CBM”) issued Directive 18/2019 on 15 November 2019 on customer due diligence. The directive sets out guidelines for customer due diligence, and mandates that banks develop an effective framework and practices in order to conduct risk assessments and manage money laundering and terrorism financing risks. Highlights […]

The Central Bank of Myanmar (“CBM”) has recently made changes to the offshore loan criteria that it has published on its website (see https://www.cbm.gov.mm/content/2066). Clearer wording has been added in terms of the differences in requirements for companies holding permits from the Myanmar Investment Commission (“MIC”) and non-MIC companies. Further updates have been made to terms […]

When a company has dissolved, it essentially means that the company has ceased to exist, and thus cannot sue or be sued. The question then becomes, how can a party pursue a claim against a dissolved company? Highlights of this note How can a party pursue a claim against a dissolved company? How to restore […]

Under section 43 of the Myanmar Companies Law 2017 (“MCL”), an overseas corporation is not allowed to ‘carry on business’ in Myanmar unless it has registered its commercial presence with the Directorate of Investment & Company Administration (“DICA”). The central concept of ‘carrying on business in Myanmar’ has, unfortunately, not been defined in the MCL. […]

Please note that a Statement by the Internal Revenue Department, Yangon Region (“IRD”) has been issued regarding enforcing monthly Personal Income Tax (“PIT”) return filings and payments. This statement by the IRD states that as per the newly enforced Tax Administration Law (“TAL”) Section 40 (a) and Section 49(a), if the party responsible for deducting […]

လျှပ်စစ်စွမ်းအင်မရှိဘဲ မည်သည့်အလုပ်ကိုမျှ လုပ်ကိုင်၍ မရပါ။ လမ်း၊ ဆိပ်ကမ်းနှင့် မီးရထား သံလမ်းများ မရှိဘဲ မည်သည့် နေရာကိုမျှ သွား၍ မရပါ။ လျှပ်စစ်စွမ်းအင် အပါအဝင် အခြေခံ အဆောက်အအုံများသည် မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံ၏ စီးပွားရေး အလားအလာကောင်းများ နှင့် အများပြည်သူတို့၏ အကျိုးစီးပွားကို လမ်းဖွင့်ပေးမည့် သော့ချက်ဖြစ်သည်။ ကောက်နှုတ်ချက် ၁။ ယခုချက်ချင်းပင် အသေးစား စီမံကိန်းများကို အလျင်အမြန် ပြီးမြောက်အောင် ဆောင်ရွက်၍ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဂုဏ်သတင်းကို ပိုမို ကောင်းမွန်အောင် ဆောင်ရွက် ရန် လိုပါသည်။၂။ အစိုးရအနေဖြင့် စာချုပ်ပါ ဝတ္တရား များကို ဖော်ဆောင်ပြီး မိမိပေး ဆောင်ရမည့် အဖိုးအခ များကို ပေးဆောင်မည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း နိုင်ငံခြား ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံသူများကို အာမခံရန် လိုအပ်ပါသည်။၃။ […]

On 19 August 2019, the Union Parliament of Myanmar, Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, enacted Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Law (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 24/2019) to replace the colonial-era Land Acquisition Act (1894) as well as to provide a legal framework for resettlement and rehabilitation for the first time in Myanmar. Highlights of this note Overview What’s […]

On 12 June 2019, the Division of Industry and Commerce, Vientiane (“DIC-Vte”) issued Instruction No. 0651 (the “Instruction”) regarding measures to be taken against the illegal operation of businesses by foreigners. The Instruction’s scope covers foreigners who operate unapproved businesses, defined as those who: Operate a business without an enterprise registration certificate (“ERC”) or business […]

On 25 June 2019, The Ministry of Industry and Commerce issued Notice No. 0764/ERMD.IC (the “Notice”) instructing its provincial and Vientiane Capital divisions to inspect the company registration of foreign-invested wholesale and retail trading companies. The intention of the Notice is to ensure that all foreign-invested trading companies (both wholesale and retail) are in compliance […]

With the recent celebration of our seventh anniversary as well as the upcoming Thingyan Festival in Myanmar, we at VDB Loi would like to thank you for your continued support. We are very pleased to share with you some of VDB Loi’s best moments and achievements over the past year. We are delighted to report […]

The job of our Corporate M&A team is to get to the point. Talk is cheap. We prove it. That means, results count. You need this kind of attitude in our markets to get something done. It is perhaps the most important core value of our Corporate M&A team, and of our firm as a […]

According to the recent Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (“DICA”) announcement issued on 8th March 2019, companies who missed the 31 January deadline now have until March 30 to re-register. However, any companies who fail to re-register by this new deadline will be struck off from the registry, and will not be able to carry on business […]

According to a previous notice of the Ministry of Commerce (“MOC”) dated 22 December 2017, all corporate entities were required to complete their online re-registration with the MOC by 31 December 2018. Recently, the MOC issued another notice, No. 0384, dated 30 January 2019, regarding further extension of the online re-registration deadline to 31 December […]

Financing and tax 2018 saw several changes to the tax regulations. The application of transfer pricing rules in Cambodia is now a reality. Starting from 2018, companies have to comply with the regulations issued in October 2017, which adopt the arm’s length principle in accordance with the OECD’s guidelines. The regulations left many questions unanswered, […]

Looking back, it is evident that 2018 has seen a lot of changes in the Myanmar legal framework. There is also a number of developments that can be expected in the near future. Banking regulations Until early November, foreign bank branches could only provide banking services to foreign companies, i.e., companies incorporated in Myanmar with […]

The new Myanmar Companies Law (“MCL”) introduced refreshed procedures and timing in terms of holding your Annual General Meeting (“AGM”) and filing an annual return in the Myanmar Companies Online (“MyCo”) system. The annual return form for overseas corporations (Form E-7) has been available in the MyCo system since 2 November 2018, while the  annual […]

Further to the amendment in 2018 of the Labor Law and Prakas 443 on seniority payment, which is applicable to all existing unlimited duration contracts (for more details, please see our Cambodia legal update here), the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training (“MLVT”), through its information declaration on seniority payments dated 28 December 2018, has provided […]

The Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population published the Leave and Holidays Rules (Notification 69/2018) and the Shops and Establishment Rules (Notification 68/2018) (the “Rules”) which implement the relevant laws. The Rules provide new forms for use by employers in lodgments to labor offices, and clarify entitlements relating to days off, public holidays, leave and […]