Brand owners target Myanmar
Myanmar: Major brand owners from MasterCard and General Electric to PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are enhancing their presence in Myanmar, a market now opening up to foreign firms.
MasterCard has become the first global payment network to give a licence to a bank in the Asian nation, alongside announcing wider goals related to training and best practice.
Matthew Driver, its division president, Southeast Asia, told Campaign Asia: "We have a responsibility to educate banks, merchants and consumers to ensure we are facilitating the right kind of behaviour in the market, that standards for security are met and consumers have a positive experience."
The holding of elections this year, albeit for just 45 of 664 seats in parliament, constituted a loosening of political restrictions in Myanmar, as the opposition National League for Democracy won 43 seats in all.
Such a process also encouraged Australia, the European Union and US to relax investment and trade sanctions on the country, which has a 60m population, skewed towards younger demographics.
Having ceased trading in Myanmar in 1997, PepsiCo announced in August that it will form a distribution tie-up with indigenous firm Diamond Star. It laid out more ambitious plans for the market last week.
