earticle

영어

Myanmar is well known to be rich in natural resources. However, during the last five decades, Myanmar’s economic development has been left behind by junta’s mismanagement. In 2010, military-backed new civilian government decided to make up for the country’s lagging economic development by building SEZs. Of course, through SEZs, governments aspire to develop and diversify exports, support local industry and clusters, create jobs, and pilot new policies. According to empirical research so far, SEZs have contributed to the dramatic success of the export-oriented growth in China and East Asia countries. But, in some countries like India, performances of SEZs have been scratchy and fell short of expectation due to various reasons such as setting up SEZ in wrong locations. In this respect, since the location for SEZ is one of the essential elements of creating SEZs, this study mainly deals with strategic locational choice for building SEZs in Myanmar. It aims to contribute to an improved understanding on choosing strategic location of SEZ as one of the essential factors for creating successful SEZs, especially by paying attention to Myanmar SEZs. Key research questions here are whether the locations of SEZs in Myanmar are effectively chosen to facilitate for economic development and whether they have strategic and relevant characters to attract foreign direct investments. To answer these, this study uses qualitative rather than quantitative analysis by applying an approach of comparative institutions and economic geography.