A useful and timely report.

In fact, less than 10% of property and services are owned by the ruling regime. They were all privatised back in the early 1990s. Most of the international class hotels are 100% foreign owned, a small number are Joint Ventures with a minority Burmese partner and one or two only are owned by the regime – and avoided like the plague because the service is not good. There is a fair sprinkling of “crony” hotels at resorts like Ngwe Saung, but – until developed – tourism tends to be a loss maker in the early years, so no one really is making all that much money, or indeed any at all. Few hotels in Burma have recorded an operating let alone an overall profit since 1990. The regime quietly complains that they are owed US$ millions in back taxes and land rentals, but international groups are struggling to service their debts which are typically 40% of capital invested,

Tourism and textiles are labour intensive industries, Indeed, 70% of Burmese exports to the USA used to be garments and textiles until the embargo cut in around 2003, and many workers were made redundant. Some 550,000 Burmese are directly employed in the tourism industry, and as many again indirectly e.g. as boutique and handicraft shops, postcard sellers, taxi-drivers. The US however does not seek to sanction tourism like the EU because the US recognises that well-heeled intelligent middle class visitors and idealistic young back-packers are a vital way to expose the country to international influences and to bear witness on their return to what they have seen.

I cannot understand why the US Campaign for Burma would like to force workers in the tourism and textile industries into unemployment. I suppose it’s all due to their ideological conviction that smashing the Burmese economy and compelling the ordinary workers into bloody revolution is the best way to bring peace and democracy that that unhappy country. But it seems to me that this is an extremist position and not one which I would wish to take.

In the garment and textiles industries, by the way, of 171 factories still surviving, 35 are 100% foreign owned, 130 are owned by private (not State, military or crony) interests, 4 are joint ventures between foreign and private Burmese companies, while only two South Korean subsidiaries are JVs with the regime, one with UMEH and one with MEC, both military companies, but the Burmese stake is a minority holding.

Middle class entrepreneurs are one of the major supporters of pro-democracy parties in Burma like the NLD. The US Campaign for Burma should not be seeking to undermine NLD supporters at the present difficult time. They should also support Burmese workers by lobbying Congress to eliminate forthwith the 70% of US sanctions which primarily affect the workers.