Nearly nine months after June 30 2019, when the preferential price for solar power of US9.35 cents per kWh expired, the new price of solar power has been officially fixed. This ends the anxious moments from investors/ developers during the period when various proposals on the FIT submitted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade […]

Myanmar is undertaking a first-ever massive tender for 30 ground-mounted solar projects totalling 1,060 MW capacity spread out over nearly half of the country’s states and regions. The effort was prompted by the Government’s economic stimulus package meant to minimize the impact of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. Highlights of this note The key points of […]

The Economic Relief Plan published the government on 27 April 2020 has put the infrastructure sector at the forefront of the government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. Various government ministries are requested to do the following before the end of 2020:  Investment approvals: Approvals by the government and the Myanmar Investment Commission will be fast-tracked […]

As with all sectors of the economy, the infrastructure sector in Myanmar will likely be significantly impacted by the current COVID-19 outbreak. Although there is no nationwide mandated shutdown, delays in construction projects are expected nonetheless. Highlights of this note Force majeure provisions in Myanmar PPAs Entitlements for contractors under construction contracts When to claim […]

With the recent drastic measures taken by the government of the Lao PDR to control the spread of COVID-19 in the community, the economy is in a precarious position as trade, investment, tourism, and growth have come to an indeterminate halt. As per the World Bank, the global economy could shrink by 1 per cent […]

On 29 March 2020, the Prime Minister of the Lao PDR issued Order No. 06/PM (“Order 06”) calling for suspension of all nonessential businesses effective from 30 March 2020 until 19 April 2020. The order prohibits all nonessential in-person communications and travel, and requires everyone, including government employees, business owners, and foreign workers, to stay […]

With new travel documentation requirements, flight cancelations, and closed borders, many have found themselves stranded in Myanmar. From tourists forced to extend their holidays, residents with stay permit to business visitors running close to expiry of their 70-day business visas, they all faced the same issue – how does one stay in Myanmar legally and […]

On 23 March 2020, in response to the spreading of COVID-19, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training (“MLVT”) issued notification 009/20 requiring all employers to provide an updated list of the contact telephone numbers of all employees to the Department of Labor Inspection of the MLVT by 26 March 2020. Lists are to be emailed to [email protected]. […]

Sickness is a paid leave permitted by the Labor Law (Article 169). Therefore, during sickness, employer needs to pay the salary of his employee. Highlights of this note If an employee falls sick, who pay the salary? What if an employee wants to stay home to take care of children or school closed or child […]

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”).

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 […]

VDB Loi has been assisting as local legal counsel to the International Finance Corporation (“IFC”), acting in its capacity as lead transaction adviser to the Ministry of Construction of the Government of Myanmar on the Yangon Elevated Expressway Project Phase 1, which is the first-ever international road Public Private Partnership (“PPP”) in Myanmar. VDB Loi […]

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 […]

電気がなければ仕事ができない。道路、港、鉄道がなければ移動できない。 電気などのインフラはミャンマーの大きな経済成長と国民繁栄への扉を開ける鍵である。電力事業、有料道路事業、水道事業、鉄道事業などへの投資を危険に晒したいと考える投資家はいない ハイライト 先ず、ミャンマーの評判をあげること。 契約を履行し支払いを実行する外国投資家を保証する。 政府間レベル案件の支援を保証する「アンブレラノート」の利用。 最大限に個人投資を増やす。 取引条件交渉のやり方は変わらなければならない。 追記

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 10 July 2019, the Department of Investment Promotion of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (“DIP”) issued Notice No. 189 (the “Notice”) regarding the suspension of the incorporation of electricity and mineral investment projects.Per the Notice, the DIP has instituted a nationwide suspension of the acceptance of applications for investment projects involving the exploration […]

Not much works without electricity, and not much moves without roads, ports and railways to move it on. Infrastructure, including electricity, is the obvious key to unlocking the huge economic potential of Myanmar and the road to prosperity for its people. Highlights of this note We need to improve Myanmar’s reputation by fast-tracking and completing […]