VDB Loi is trying to do its part in Myanmar’s efforts to stimulate the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Ministry of Electricity and Energy has launched a 1 Gig solar project tender, we have asked our relationships at state and regional governments, local clients and other contacts if they have any suitable land […]

On 20 May 2020, Cambodia’s State Secretariat of Civil Aviation issued new rules for international travelers arriving in Cambodia. The new regulation addresses the problem of Cambodian and overseas nationals coming (back) to the country during the pandemic. A Cambodian national who returned from the Philippines that very same day was discovered to have COVID-19. […]

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”). Highlights of this note How does the new process work? The proposal required for starting the land acquisition process has […]

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 […]

After almost one year of enactment of the Myanmar Trademark Law 2019 (for our previous article about the law, please see here, the Ministry of Commerce (“MOC”) has brought implementation of the law on schedule. A draft regulation of the Trademark Law has been circulated for comments, and the MOC is testing the new on-line filing systems for trademark registration. In light of the recent meetings held by MOC to […]

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 […]

Following previous announcements by the Ministry of Planning and Finance (“MoPF”), foreign life and non-life insurance companies can now form joint ventures with local insurance companies. In light of the recent developments, VDB Loi has been engaged by applicants in the application process. On 31 July 2019, the MoPF by way of Announcement No. (3/2019) […]

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 […]

As we mentioned in our previous article on the Myanmar Trademark Law 2019 [10 Frequently Asked Questions About the Myanmar Trademark Law 2019], the Myanmar Industrial Design Rights Law 2019 (the “Industrial Design Law”) was passed at the same time. Highlights of this note What kind of industrial design is registrable? Can I sell the […]

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 […]

Highlights of this note What kind of mark is registrable? Does the trademark law adopt a “first-to-file” or “first-to-use” system? Can I claim priority rights? How long can a registered trademark be protected? What rights does a trademark owner have? If I identify a pending trademark application infringing upon my rights, what can I do? […]

We have a particularly extensive TMT track record in our markets, advising on the full range of telecom investments and transactions. Our firm has a role in many of the region’s high- profile telecom deals and is recognized as a tier-one practice in this field. Our advice is trusted by governments, multinational operators and vendors, […]