Myanmar cuts skyscrapers down to size

Bloomberg

Developer Bo San had already sold all the units in his 12-story high-rise in Yangon in Myanmar when he was forced to halt construction. Three months later he faces the task of having to remove two floors to comply with new height regulations, at a cost of $8 million.
Since May, the regional government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy has suspended work at 185 construction sites across Yangon, and ordered the number of floors to be reduced at a dozen previously approved buildings.
“I understand and accept that the policy was changed when the government changed,” he said. “But the new policy should be imposed on new projects, without affecting previous projects.”
The government says the old laws were written when Yangon had virtually no high rises and the approval process for new buildings was chaotic, but developers say the changes will cost millions and risk scaring off investment. It is some of the first public criticism of the NLD since it became the first democratically-elected government in more than 50 years and raises questions about whether Suu Kyi and her party are up to the task of managing an economy in transition.
Deepening Concerns
Projected to have the fastest economic growth in Southeast Asia this year at 8.4 percent, foreign direct investment surged to a record $9.4 billion in the fiscal year ended March, and Myanmar’s kyat has outperformed most other Asian currencies this year. Yet while the economy benefited as the military gradually relinquished power and sanctions were eased, much work remains to be done. Two-thirds of Myanmar’s 52 million people live in the countryside, many without electricity, and annual per-capita gross domestic product is $1,200, on the low side for Southeast Asia.
The government said late last month it would make a long-awaited announcement about its economic plan. But after hours of waiting for a promised media briefing, the NLD merely released a list of broad goals.
“This is not an economic policy; it is the party’s general statement,” said Khin Maung Swe, chairman of the National Democratic Force, formed from a split in the NLD six years ago. “They have to say how they will increase GDP and per capita income, how they will manage inflation, how they will increase productivity. They have to tell us these plans. But now there is nothing.”

‘More Detail’
The business community is also looking for more guidance, said Thein Tun, chairman of the Myanmar Banks Association. “We want more detail and specific economic policies,” he said. “I think this is important. When we know government policies, it is much better for us to work.” Some people are understandably disappointed by a lack of detail in the government’s economic program, but significant work is being done behind the scenes, said Sean Turnell, an associate economics professor at Macquarie University in Sydney who advises the NLD.
“The NLD has not stepped into a well-oiled, well-practiced process,” Turnell said. “Rather, it has been handed the reins of a hitherto highly dysfunctional apparatus many parts of which were not geared so much to delivering social welfare, as to suppressing dissent and defending the privileges of a ruling elite.”
He said people need to take into account that Myanmar under the previous administration was not a place where the opposition could securely prepare for running a government, and that before that, under the junta, NLD members were “hunted, imprisoned, harassed, impoverished and occasionally even killed.” Suu Kyi’s government has faced criticism for holding too few media briefings, sporadic press releases, and a lack of clarity about media access to government events, said Kyaw Swa Min, joint secretary of the Myanmar Press Council and general secretary of the Myanmar Journalists Association.
“Compared with the previous government, for example, President Thein Sein gave monthly policy and strategy addresses to the public,” Kyaw Swa Min said. “The government should make more contact with the media, provide more information, and not control or restrict the flow of information if they want to strengthen democracy.”