(old news : 26 March) After a delay of more than 20 years, Myanmar’s stock exchange opened for its first day of business, with the trading of a single company.

• The move comes as the country’s development accelerates with a democratic government being formed after an election victory in November, part of a political and economic transformation that’s bringing an end to more than five decades of isolation.
• The listing debut was attended by First Myanmar’s Pun and officials including Maung Maung Thein, the country’s deputy finance minister and chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who called it “a historic day in the development of the capital markets.”
• First Myanmar, Myanmar Citizens Bank and Myanmar Thilawa SEZ are among the initial batch of six companies approved for listing.
• Myanmar’s equity-market journey began in the early 1990s, when executives from Daiwa Institute of Research Holdings, a unit of Japan’s second-largest brokerage, met with the nation’s military rulers in Yangon.
• Their initial target was to start a bourse by 2000.
• As Myanmar emerges from economic isolation, it will need $80 billion of power, transport, and technology projects through 2030 to modernise its economy, according to the Asian Development Bank.
• Foreign investors will be able to trade on the exchange once Myanmar’s new government passes revisions to the country’s companies law.