(Reuters) – Companies awarded telecommunications licences in Myanmar this week will need to spend billions of dollars rolling out networks across a country that has yet to pass a law to govern the sector and where opaque, state-owned enterprises will remain players.

The process is being watched closely as a test case for reform inMyanmar, although the risks did not stop 90 international firms and groups from joining the initial phase.

FULL STORY: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/24/uk-myanmar-telecoms-idUKBRE95M0GP20130624

(Reuters) – Her adoring compatriots believe democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi is destined to become Myanmar’s next president. But don’t bet on it.

FULL STORY: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/uk-myanmar-suukyi-idUKBRE95I1P820130619

In a cramped auditorium in Myanmar’s capital, pro-democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi had a message for the world’s business elite: her country is teeming with foreign investors scouting for opportunities in one of Asia’s final frontier markets, but not many are actually investing.

FULL STORY: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/09/us-myanmar-reforms-idUSBRE9580H120130609

Hundreds of Muslim families sheltered in a heavily guarded Buddhist monastery on Thursday after two days of violence in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio left Muslim properties in ruins and raised alarm over a widening religious conflict.

About 1,200 Muslims were taken to Mansu Monastery after Buddhist mobs terrorized the city on Wednesday, a move that could signal the resolve of a government criticized for its slow response to previous religious violence.

FULL STORY: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/30/us-myanmar-violence-idUSBRE94S0JD20130530

Security forces struggled to control Buddhist mobs who burned Muslim homes on Wednesday for a second day in the northern Myanmar city of Lashio in a dangerous widening of ultra-nationalist Buddhist violence.

Scores of young men and boys on motorbikes and on foot marauded through the city of 130,000 people, some singing nationalist songs, a day after a mosque and religious school were torched.

FULL STORY: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-myanmar-violence-idUSBRE94S0JD20130529

Burma’s currency has plunged more than 7 percent over the past month to the lowest since it was floated last year, raising concern about economic stability in Asia’s newest democracy.

The drop coincides with a construction boom in Burma’s commercial capital, Rangoon, which is fuelling demand for dollars as builders import equipment and materials, part of a scramble by investors to tap one of the world’s last frontier markets after an easing of sanctions by Western countries.

FULL STORY: http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/35439