Daily Archives: July 25, 2022

The Minstry of Planning and Finance stated that a plan is underway to disburse K400 billion to local businesses at soft interest rate. According to the press release issued on 23 July, Union ministers and region/state governments are systematically spending the national natural disaster management fund on undertakings of the Covid-19 prevention, control and treatment under the permission of the Covid-19 prevention, control and treatment national central committee.

Till 14 July 2022, the remainng amount of the fund totalled K491.978 billion. Now, as the infection rate of the pandemic much declienes, efforts will be made for surging the State economy in all aspects, according to the press release.

K400 billion from the fund will be disbursed to local businesses at soft interest rate under the supervision of the Ministry of Planning and Finance. According to the Ministry of Health, 11 patients was found with positive result in laboratory test over 3,907 lab samples from 8 pm on 23 July to 8 pm on 24 July, with 0.28 per cent of infection rate.

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar

Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) denied spreading rumour of reimplementation of Foreign Exchange Certificate which was earlier abolished, according to a notification released by the CBM on 22 July. The Foreign Exchange Management Law was enacted in 2012 and amended in 2015 and 2021 respectively.

Provisions regarding functions and responsibilities of the CBM for forex management, foreign exchange activities, holding foreign currencies and opening forex accounts, the use of Kyat during international transactions, activities of the authorized money changers, purchase, sales and import/export of gold and jewellery, ordinary account and large account transactions are put in to this law.

Therefore, there is no provision related to the issue of FECs in the CBM’s tasks enacted in this law. This being so, reimplementation of the FEC system is just a groundless rumour. The CBM stated that there is no plan to implement this system again according to the Foreign Exchange Management Law.

Additionally, all the foreign currency earned by locals have to be exchanged for local currency at the Central Bank of Myanmar’s reference rate of K1,850 by opening the accounts at the authorized dealers in the country within one working day, according to the CBM’s notification (12/2022) released on 3 April.

The CBM further released a statement concerning companies or institutions that are exempt from this action. Those companies exempted from this have to convert the foreign currencies into local currency at the authorized dealers. Moreover, the CBM denied another baseless rumour of seizing foreign currencies of the foreign account holders (companies, institutions and individuals).

Source: The Global New Light of Myanmar