View the English language version of The Military, Money, and Myanmar: Breaking the Nexus

11 February 2025: This SAC-M briefing paper, written by esteemed economist Sean Turnell, outlines why the Myanmar military’s stranglehold on Myanmar’s economy must be broken and how it can be done.

The paper also indicates what individual states, private corporations and the international system can do to support the Myanmar people in building a prosperous economy for a new, federal democratic Myanmar. The struggle in Myanmar is in the hands of the peoples of Myanmar but they look for international support. This paper shows how it can and must be provided.

The briefing paper includes the following key messages:

• The command that Myanmar’s military has over the country’s finances is at theheart of its ability to wage war on the people they are meant to protect.
• This nexus between money and oppression comes via the military’s control ofMyanmar’s central bank, its tax system, the earnings of state-owned enterprises, and is extended via the military’s dominance over banks and other financial
• Since the military coup of February 2021, and the mismanagement and brutality ofthe State Administration Council (SAC) junta that has ruled much of Myanmar since, this chronic scenario has become dramatically worse. In an economy bent to the needs of war, money and munitions, these terms are near synonyms in Myanmar
• Myanmar’s people have not been passive to these depredations, and in themonetary and financial sphere, as well as on the battlefield, the forces of resistance to the SAC have been innovative and committed. Ancient and trusted monetary instruments that protect anonymity and freedom have returned; new institutions have been fashioned to fund the struggle against the junta’s tyranny.
• The atrocities committed by the SAC junta have also prompted a response fromother countries. This includes the imposition of sanctions on the junta’s enabling financial institutions, as well as individuals who facilitate the flow of money to  These sanctions are effective, especially in denying the junta the foreign exchange it needs to purchase advanced weaponry from abroad.
• Such international sanctions should be expanded in terms of the countries levyingthem, and to the institutions and individuals they target. Sanctions must extend to the central bank, as well as to the ability of Myanmar’s financial institutions more broadly to make and receive international payments.
• Debt issued by the SAC junta should be regarded as odious, and its repayment notto be binding on future governments in Myanmar. There should be no incentives for other countries to financially support the SAC junta, nor profit from its misrule.
• Longer term, Myanmar’s military must be financially subservient to the institutions of a democratic civilian government and parliament, subject to their oversight, and excluded from engaging in profit-making enterprise. Military owned and affiliated corporations should be detached from the military, privatised and their proceeds used as part of a sovereign fund to finance pension and other liabilities to Myanmar citizens broadly. Military-owned land and other assets should be transferred out of military ownership into a state property trust under the control of the democratic civilian government and parliament.
• Myanmar’s banks must be restructured, recapitalised, and reimagined as vehiclesfor peace and prosperity instead of as the sinews of war. Foreign investment in the sector should be encouraged as one way to avoid cronyism, while a new state-owned development bank created out of the ashes of existing government banks should assist in stability.
• Myanmar’s public finances must be placed on a sustainable stable basis, with areformed and equitable taxation system complemented by a functioning market for government debt.
• A just and democratic fiscal framework between all levels of government inMyanmar, but especially between the centre and the states and regions, must be  In the sphere of economic policy this must entail a greater decentralisation of decision making, which itself will resist the concentration of power in the ways long exploited by Myanmar’s military.

View the English language version of The Military, Money, and Myanmar: Breaking the Nexus