“We did this to demonstrate support for the new government’s democratic reforms and to promote broad-based, inclusive economic development”, said US State Department spokesperson John Kirby.

The steps announced by the Department of the Treasury were intended to support trade, facilitate the movement of goods, allow certain incidental transactions related to certain individuals residing in Myanmar, and to allow more transactions involving designated financial institutions in the country, he said.

The easing of sanctions this week was a major move by Washington to support the first civilian government in half a century led by President Htin Kyaw and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Myanmar on May 22 to meet with leaders in Nay Pyi Taw to signal US support for the democratically elected, civilian-led government and further democratic and economic reforms, a statement by the State Department said.

Myanmar welcomed the US decision and hoped the easing of economic sanctions would help boost trade and investment between the two countries.

“It is a good move. I hope bilateral trade will get a boost starting from this year, given the recent easing of some sanctions. Obviously, our trade volume will also increase, thanks to the potential increase in bilateral economic activities,” said Maung Aung, an economist and senior adviser to the Commerce Ministry.

The new measures would expand General License 20 (GL 20), allowing the use of key transportation and trade-related infrastructure, to counter the unintended consequences of sanctions that hurt the Myanmar economy and US businesses engaged in the Myanmar market, according to the Treasury Department.

“Expansion of GL 20 signals to foreign and domestic companies, that Myanmar is open for business,” it said.

Specifically, the measure would allow Myanmar’s banks on the blacklist like Specially Designated National (SDN) to engage in financial transactions with US banks as well as connect Myanmar’s financial system with the global economy, the US Treasury Department said.

These banks – Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank, Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank, and Myanmar Economic Bank – would no longer face any restrictions.

The restrictions earlier prevented the Myanmar banks from any direct transaction with the US and they mostly had to depend on banks in Singapore. Also, most of the US investments do not invest directly in the country and many of them are subsidiaries of US firms based in Thailand. There are also restrictions on the amount of investment – a US firm is not allowed to invest more than $ 500,000 in Myanmar.

“Unless all the economic sanctions are completely lifted, it is out of the question for us to attract massive investment from big US companies,” said Than Lwin, senior consultant of KBZ Bank and former deputy governor of the central bank.

Myanmar’s state-owned enterprises such as those involved in mining, timber and jade would be able to do business with their counterpart from the US.

“The lifting of the sanctions may result in more quality exports from Myanmar, especially gems and jewellery, and garment. Our export market should not rely only on China. So, the US may become our next export target in the future, said Than Lwin of KBZ bank.

In the first quarter of this year, Myanmar-US bilateral trade reached US$124.1 million, with US exports to Myanmar worth $75.8 million. Trade numbers have steadily increased since the sanctions were first formally eased in July 2012, from $65.8 million in 2012 to $361.2 million in 2015. Trade totalled $175.7 million in 2013 and $185.6 million in 2014. Major US firms like General Electric, Western Union, Gap Inc, and Coca-Cola have made business forays into Myanmar.

The listed items are logs, timber, partially-processed wood, tree roots, root balls, tree branches, dried trees and ornamental plants.

The prohibition also covers the cutting quota approved by the government previously, meaning that all forms of logs and timber must be fully processed and converted into finished products before being exported.

Previously, the government prohibited the export of logs, requiring businesses to make finished products for export.

The latest prime ministerial order also prohibits the import of wood and non-timber forest products into Laos for export to third countries.

The prime minister has ordered the continuation of a suspension on logging in production forests but asked officials in charge to accelerate the drawing up of an allocation plan for production forests and submit it to the government for consideration.

The relevant sectors were asked to carry out proper surveys on trees that will be felled within development projects such as areas where new roads will be cut through, water catchment areas for new hydropower plants, and areas where new mining projects will be developed.

The survey will be made use of when the government draws up an annual logging quota to submit to the National Assembly for approval.

Thongloun has entrusted the relevant sectors to follow up the order closely and ensure that any logging already carried out has been done in approved areas.

Any excess to the approved logging quota and logging in non-approved areas will result in the logs being seized and those involved will be fined and penalised.

Thongloun said the relevant government bodies must be responsible for carrying out logging to make way for infrastructure development, but project developers and contractors are not allowed to fell trees. Logging can only be done with the government’s approval.

He told authorities not to use timber to finance infrastructure development.

The prime minister has instructed the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in collaboration with the relevant sectors to accelerate the improvement of operations at wood processing plants to meet acceptable standards.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was asked to work with the Ministry of National Defence and other sectors to patrol border areas as well as inspect sawmills and furniture and wood processing plants to prevent illegal logging and the transport and trading of logs.

Thongloun told the authorities to use tough measures to penalise those found guilty of illegal logging, trading and other related activities.

He instructed the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to work with the relevant sectors to follow up the implementation of the order and report on its progress to the government regularly.

Victoria Kwakwa, vice deputy president for World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific Region, cited the key opportunities outlined in the WB’s Vietnam 2035 Report, which include trade agreements like theAsean Economic Community, Trans-Pacific Partnership and EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement.

Within 10 years, China is expected to have a billion-strong middle class, while facing rapidly rising wages.

“Perhaps the biggest opportunity lies in completing the unfinished economic modernisation agenda, led by the private sector and with a focus on boosting productivity,” she said.

She noted, however, that declining productivity growth might be the biggest challenge to 2035 income aspirations.

The growth rate fluctuated from the peak of almost 7 per cent in 1995 to around 3.5 per cent in 2013.

Weakening growth has been caused by public investment decisions that were inefficient due to fragmented state institutions and uncoordinated decision making, and by state-owned enterprises making unproductive use of scarce resources.

Meanwhile, the domestic private sector has become unproductive, with the commercialisation of state institutions being a key contributing factor.

An immediate priority should be given to boosting productivity of the domestic private sector by strengthening micro institutions of the market economy and competition policy and its enforcement.

A commercial approach to state ownership should also be adopted, she said.

Equitisation should be accelerated, and the playing field for the private sector leveled. Consolidation of corporate governance is also needed, she said.

Regarding the business environment, Bui Quang Vinh, former minister of planning and investment, said there was still “not a small” gap between the Government’s instructions on reform procedures and the implementation by lower levels, such as in the field of customs.

He said recent regulations still enabled sub-licensing, which hinders creativity, negatively affects businesses and weakens competitiveness.

He also noted that access to capital sources, and land and mineral resources, by the private sector has not conformed to the market economy, causing difficulties to decent private businesses.

The fact that people having been putting their money in banking deposits indicates that the business start-up environment is not favourable, he said.

Vinh called on FDI businesses to implement their promises in various fields, including technology transfer, human resource development and research and development activities.

The country wants the maids to be employed as formal workers – with stipulated working hours and no longer having to stay at the employer’s house and they must have a weekly off day, said Indonesian Ambassador Herman Prayitno.

“We want a formal contract between the domestic helper and the employer. Just like the contracts drawn up for employment in companies,” he added.

The report added Indonesia as saying that such a move was crucial to stop what they allege is a systemic abuse of maids who were deprived of minimum wage, leave and fixed working hours.

Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (Papa) president Jeffrey Foo said Indonesia should look into enhancing the skills of its workers to enable them to be employed as specialised caregivers or trained nannies.

“Then, they will certainly be able to draw a higher wage of more than 1,000 ringgit (US$248).”

Foo also noted that the percentage of Indonesian maids had decreased tremendously over the last seven years.

“We used to have about 300,000 registered domestic maids some six or seven years ago and 80 per cent of them were Indonesians.

“Now the total number of maids has dropped to less than 200,000, of which 50,000 are Indonesians,” he said.

The memorial for the revered founder of modern Vietnam also commemorates the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Thailand.

Nguyen Van Nen, chief of the Party Central Committee’s Office, led a Vietnamese delegation from Hanoi to jointly preside over the ceremony.

The Vietnamese community in Thailand preserved the house as his memorial and built a Friendship village there as an attractive site years ago – but these were not grand enough.

The idea to have a memorial complex for Uncle Ho became a fact when Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong visited the Friendship village during his official trip to Thailand in June 2013 and offered Bt45 million (VND 30 billion) to the Thailand-Vietnam Association. The Thai government also donated 5 rai (11,200 square metres) of land for the complex.

The construction work, overseen by the association, took two years beginning March 2014.

“The Ho Chi Minh Memorial Complex in Nakhon Phanom is the world’s largest overseas memorial to honour the beloved Vietnamese leader,” said Wisarut Chinthanasathien, president of Nakhon Phanom’s Thailand-Vietnam Association and vice president of the Vietnamese Association of Thailand. “This reflects how much we love Bac Ho [uncle Ho] and the strong relations between the people of the two countries,” he said.

There are other memorial sites to Ho Chi Minh, such as in Phichit and Udon Thani, to mark locations where the Vietnamese nation’s founder lived in Thailand, he said. People in Laos, France, other places in Europe and Latin America also have memorial sites for Uncle Ho – but none compared with the newly built complex in Nakhon Phanom, he said.

The Ho Chi Minh memorial complex comprises three buildings, displaying pictures and archives of Ho Chi Minh’s independence struggle for Vietnam and wax figures to show his life style. The Nakhon Phanom provincial authority wanted to use the memorial as a symbol of long relations between Thailand and Vietnam as well as an attractive site.

There would be also a centre for Otop (One Tambon, One product) goods from Thailand and Vietnam in the complex, Wisarut said.

Waves of Vietnamese migrants fled from difficulties at home to settle in Thailand over generations. A large number took refuge in Thailand during the first and second Indochina wars in the 1940s and 1970s. Viet kieu assimilated and lived mostly in the Northeastern provinces, including Loei, Mukdahan, Nakhon Phanom, Ubon Ratchatani and Udon Thani. There are 1,600 Vietnamese households in Nakhon Phanom alone. They have played significant roles in the local community and made an essential contribution to the provincial economy.

Deputy Finance Minister Chua Tee Yong said that if foreign investors were not confident in Malaysian markets, FDI would show a downward trend.

“FDI in 2014 was at 35 billion ringgit (US$8.68 billion), and the number shot up to 43 billion ringgit last year.

Chua noted that Malaysia’s economy is expected to progress, driven by domestic demand and private sector contributions.

“This year, private investment is expected to increase by 5.5 per cent, which is still a high percentage given the global economic uncertainties.

“All economic sectors have recorded progress thus far, except for agriculture which had a drop of 3.8 per cent due to low palm oil prices after the El Nino phenomenon,” he said.

Earlier in response to a question by Annuar Musa, Chua said the government is focusing on more incentives and tax benefits for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to increase their investment and production.

“We have various initiatives through the Malaysian Investment Development Authority and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to encourage SMEs to export and also invest,” he said.

On the financial front, Chua said the global crude oil price was stabilising, with the average at US$34 in the first quarter of this year.

“We are confident that with this stability, the government will look towards taking proactive steps to reduce the people’s burden,” he said.

“Duterte is promoting something not so urgent such as reducing crime, which is important, but not necessarily No. 1 and his attitude towards this has been aggressive,” Nordberg said Tuesday in a forum hosted by the Nordic Business Council Philippines (NBCP).

Stressing that new policies will dictate long-term growth prospects, Nordberg also included in his list education; actions to secure the competitiveness of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry such as setting up necessary telecommunication infrastructure, ensuring sufficient levels of labor and providing incentives and government subsidies; sustaining the current economic conditions of high employment, stable inflation and healthy external balance sheet; continued fight against corruption; and sustainable growth of the renewable energy industry.

Duterte’s economic priorities also included the strengthening of the basic education system; improvement of the taxation system; and expansion of the conditional cash transfer programme.

At a conference held by PanNature at the end of last month, experts said that budget collections from mineral mining activities were not proportional to the exploitation scales. Statistics of the Ministry of Finance revealed that natural resources exploitation (excluding oil) contributed merely between 0.9 per cent and 1.1 per cent to the State budget from 2011 to 2015.

Vietnam began to collect natural resources consumption tax in 1991, in accordance to the Ordinance on Natural Resource Tax 1990 which was amended twice in 1998 and 2008, and was replaced by the Law on Natural Resources Tax in 2009.

Currently, the resource consumption tax calculation was based on output and prices, Truong said, and added that the output was declared by firms while the prices were set by the provincial authorities and were varied between different localities.

However, the management towards exploitation output was weak, coupled with inefficient co-ordination between tax and natural resource authorities, which was causing losses to the budget, Truong said.

Emanuel Bria, from the Natural Resource Governance Institute, was quoted by Cong Thuong (Industry and Trade) newspaper as saying that Vietnam could lose up to US$1 billion in budget collection due to gaps in resource consumption tax policies and a weak management.

While Vietnam still struggled to balance the budget, Emanuel said that amendments to the Law on Natural Resource Tax towards transparency and appropriateness was necessary to improve collection, he said.

Tran Thanh Thuy, from Vietnam Mining Coalition, urged Vietnam to apply the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global voluntary standard to ensure transparency of payments from natural resources.

Thuy said that the EITI, applied in 49 countries around the world, had helped them to collect taxes efficiently.