Author/Editor:

International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department

Publication Date:

March 26, 2019

Electronic Access:

Free Full Text. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file

Summary:

This aide-mémoire covers the four visits to Myanmar between February and May 2018 by Mr. Jun Iwasaki, Regional Advisor in Monetary and Foreign Exchange Operations for the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) in TAOLAM. During these visits, the advisor focused his work on the areas of the financial markets developments and monetary operations-related issues through discussions with officials in the Central Bank of Myanmar’s (CBM) Monetary Policy Affairs Department (MPAD), Accounts Department (AD), as well as with market participants. As for financial markets developments, the data collected by the CBM show that there already exist a significant number of uncollateralized interbank (I/B) transactions in Myanmar, but that the data on these transactions are not effectively used. The CBM is publishing graphs of “interbank market rates” on its website, based on the data, but the information is outdated and its presentation can be improved. One major obstacle is the low quality of data reporting by banks. The advisor recommends finding out what motivates banks to use different types of I/B transactions and strengthening the effort for upgrading banks’ reporting quality. He also recommends considering better use of the data by publishing Trade Weighted Average Interest Rates on key durations and the total transaction amount weekly, with due considerations of the operational feasibility. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is providing support to the CBM’s data with the necessary IT solutions. If implemented, this provision of market rates information would function as reference rates for the I/B markets, with the expectation of contributing to the further development of this market.