Cut through red tape for foreign investors, urges MIC

He said at the event entitled “Myanmar’s new investment law: Hear from the experts” on Wednesday that MIC is making efforts to find out better solutions for the sake of both foreign and local investors. 
To him, the biggest challenge MIC is facing is to deal with different ministries when it comes to creating a more enabling environment for investors. Other challenges include drafting the rule of MIL within 90 days and seeking cooperation with some state and regional governments for implementation of investment zones across the country. 
“According to the procedures, some ministries will loss their powers and authority. So, some of them are not happy with that,” he said. 
“Some of the ministries are quite conservative. They also want to hold their rights. They want more regulatory powers in their hands. Whenever we talk about creation of better business environment, there must be some liberalisation of the ministries because some rules and regulations are totally outdated.”
He expected the rule of MIL to be approved by January 2017. He said the government wants to exercise everything with the new investment law, starting from 2017-18 fiscal year. 
“According to the new law, transparency is very important. Therefore, we are currently drafting the rules for that. There are a lot of issues for us to complete the whole process within a short period of time,” he said. 
“We will exercise the rule of the previous foreign investment law as long as the new rule is not in place, so all the incentives and privileges will be according to the previous foreign investment law.” 
Aung Naing Oo said that MIC has conducted three consultative meetings with different ministries, the latest of which was held last week, to explain them about the government’s intentions for liberalisation, openness, transparency, and the considerations of MIC for streamlining the procedures. 
“There was a heated discussion between the ministries and MIC. Actually, almost all the ministries understood the political will of the government, MIC’s considerations and more importantly, what investors want. But we still need to consult with the ministries on some issues, which are still in the pipeline,” he said. 
During the discussions, some ministries asked for a lot of their requirements. They wanted MIC to consult with them and seek their approval before approving investors’ proposals. Some of the requirements are environmental and social impacts assessments, environmental management plans, among others. 
“The problem is that it is very costly for investors and takes a long time. It creates a lot of problems for MIC. We also need to consider how we can go parallel for EIA, SIA requirements and investment,” he said. 
Another area that MIC seeks cooperation is monitoring the investments whether companies are doing the same as they committed before getting the approval. A monitoring division was formed under DICA, and a number of teams including officials from different ministries have been paying site visits on weekends. 
“We also need to consider sustainability of monitoring. For the time being, it is okay. But if we consider for the long term, there will be a lot of investment. So I am consulting with the ministries on how they can regulate from their perspectives. MIC alone cannot do everything. So we do need support from a lot of ministries,” he said. 
According to MIL, there must be three zones for tax incentives: Zone 1 for least developed areas, Zone 2 for moderately-developed areas, and Zone 3 for developed areas. MIC needs to cooperate with state and regional governments for setting the zones. 
“We have sought suggestions from the state and regional governments. Some state and regional governments were quite fast to respond to us because they have prepared everything. They explain the reasons why they want to put this township in Zone 1 and that township in Zone 2 and so on. But some still do not respond to MIC yet. We are still waiting for that,” he said. 
MIC has extended the deadline of regional governments’ suggestions for division of investment zones until the end of this month, though it was first scheduled on November 9. Only 3-4 regional governments are yet to respond, he added.