A shortened week due to a public holiday on Monday. Then it was off to Yangon for my monthly financial consultancy work from Tue to Fri. This was one of my longest trip for a while, having to spend 3 nights there. The agenda was packed with meetings and discussions with deadlines to work towards.
We had hired a Treasury manager who finally started in Apr. It was timely as there was a lot of work we needed to do, to line up the funding pipeline, track and complete the drawdowns of much-needed financing for our marketing teams to lend to the end clients as demand outstripped existing funds and capital.
It was good to know that much work has been done in the last 17 months and our loan portfolio has grown by a factor of 3 times. We have a more robust infrastructure for future growth, yet we are already starting to prepare for a digitalization road map and strategy to enable us to move to the next stage of growth.
It is so exciting when you see an energized senior management team leading a fast-growing company. We can literally see the fruits of our labour and feel the warmth of appreciative customers. To be able to help farmers get out of their poverty and living from hand to mouth existence is a reward unto itself.
We had 3 nice dinners of mainly western and Italian food with wines on this trip. The last night was especially memorable as our colleague brought us to the largest fruits and vegetables market in the evening. This market is open 24 x 7. Given that the country had closed itself from the world for 50+ years, the place was stuck in a time warp. While we can see progress as all shops were piled high with stock, the whole market seems unchanged and reminded me of photos of Singapore from the 1950s.
Things are brighter now since the country opened up about 5 years ago. People are eating better now and everyone seems to have a smartphone in their hands. The middle class is rising fast. Now that they have seen what the outside world can offer, everyone is hungry for more.
As my fellow consultant and I crossed into our second half, the rewards are less about financial. It is more about the satisfaction of seeing the company grow and that we can use our past experience to value add to the economy.
More FDI (Foreign Direct Investments) are starting to pour into the country again. The government is more aware of the bottlenecks preventing businesses from growing faster and becoming more proactive now. Infrastructure investments are also timely as the city cannot handle the modern load capacity and traffic jams are a given everywhere in the city.
The future is bright but I wish that the central government is able to capture the opportunities more aggressively as they have slowed developments for the last few years after opening up. I believe that its citizens are now ready to embrace the future.
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