Resource information
This compendium focuses on recent articles related to the development of industrial estates in the major urban centres of Myanmar. Although the clustering of traditional craft industries was common in towns and cities throughout Burma in the colonial era, it was not until the 1950s that modern industrial complexes such as those in the Pyay district of central Burma and in several parts of Rangoon began to take shape. The displacement of urban core residents and small enterprises that took place in the late fifties also led to the development of industrial sites in satellite towns on the east side of the capital. But it was only in the 1990s, following the opening to privately owned industries by Burma’s military government, that the push to develop industrial zones throughout the country began in earnest.
Today there are more than fifty industrial parks scattered throughout the country, about half of them in the area around the national capital. Some, like the new complexes at Indagaw near Bago and the two near Kyaukse in Upper Myanmar are exclusively reserved for state-owned factories. Others are being developed with foreign capital for foreign-owned enterprises or foreign companies that have entered into joint-venture agreements with holding companies of the military government. Most of the new industrial estates are being developed by the Department of Human Settlement and Housing Development of the Ministry of Construction specifically for privately owned industries. Over 6,000 of the 50,000 privately owned manufacturing enterprises in the country are now accommodated in these zones. Recently, several privately owned land development companies have begun their own industrial parks in the Yangon area in collaboration with the DHSHD.
The articles in the compendium are arranged in chronological order with the most recently published at the top of the list.
The articles have been selected on the basis that they are representative of initiatives and challenges faced in the rapidly developing industrial zones of Myanmar. Internet search engines such as Google will yield many more references on any one of the many zones named here. Researchers should bear in mind that place names in Myanmar are frequently spelled in a variety of ways in English. Thus, the use of different spellings as search words may result in a considerable increase in the amount of information generated.
