Yangon - A delegation of American business leaders, including Microsoft chairperson Bill Gates, will visit Myanmar soon, Myanmar industry officials said on Wednesday, another sign of strengthening US ties with the long-isolated state despite sanctions.
The visit would come less than three months after Hillary Clinton became the first US secretary of state to visit Myanmar in more than 50 years and said Washington stood ready to support reforms in the country and possibly lift sanctions.
The trip, expected in February, is unusual given the presence of US sanctions but it coincides with the most dramatic reforms in the resource-rich, former British colony since the military took power in what was then known as Burma in a 1962 coup.
“A team of high-level American businessmen including Bill Gates is due to visit,” said one business leader and senior member of the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries (MFCCI) who declined to be identified because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
A spokesperson for Gates was not immediately available for comment.
Business executives, mostly from Asia, have swarmed into the commercial capital Yangon in recent weeks to scout for investment opportunities in the country of 60 million people, one of the last frontier markets in Asia.
Japanese delegationAnother industry official said the US executives would meet President Thein Sein, visit tourist spots and spend time with local business leaders, many of whom face targeted sanctions by the US government.
Some investment analysts have compared Myanmar’s state of development to Vietnam in 1994 when American sanctions against Hanoi were lifted. But Myanmar’s location is considered more strategic, nestled between rising powers India and China with ports on the Indian Ocean.
Before late last year, when reforms gathered steam, China was emerging as the dominant investor in the country’s resources - from natural gas to timber and precious gems.
Chinese workers are building a multi-billion dollar pipeline, hydropower dams and highway projects that underpin more than $14bn of pledged Chinese investment in Myanmar’s 2010/11 (April-March) fiscal year, taking total foreign direct investment promises to $20bn from just $300m a year before, official data show.
Executives from Japanese companies have also taken an interest in recent weeks. Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano this week leads a delegation that includes officials from Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsui, Itochu, JX Nippon Oil & Energy and Marubeni.
Last week, US billionaire investor George Soros visited the country and said he had agreed to set up an official base for his philanthropic work in Myanmar after meetings with the country’s president and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmar has been closed off to the world for nearly half a century of often-brutal authoritarian rule. The former military regime handed power in March to a civilian government stacked with former generals, who surprised the world by embarking on a programme of reforms and strengthening relations with the West.
Myanmar, however, remains vastly underdeveloped and is one of Asia’s poorest countries after decades of isolation, sanctions and economic mismanagement by its former military rulers.