Irrawaddy-Feb 11
Cutting off the Myanmar junta’s financial lifelines with sanctions against the Central Bank of Myanmar (CBM) and other institutions it relies on for its global transactions tops recommendations in a new report by an economic expert.
In the report published by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), economist Sean Turnell emphasizes that cutting off the junta’s funding is crucial to weakening its grip on power and paving the way for a democratic Myanmar.
Turnell, a former economic advisor to State Counselor Daw Aug San Suu Kyi, points out that the military has long entrenched itself in Myanmar’s financial system. “For Myanmar’s military rulers, getting money of some form has never been a problem,” he writes. “In control of the central bank for most of the last seven decades, Myanmar’s military has enjoyed complete discretion over [its] own budget. What the military wants in budget allocations, it typically gets.”
Since the coup in 2021, it has taken full control of state-owned enterprises, the central bank, foreign exchange rates, and military-aligned banks to facilitate money laundering, weapons procurement, and illicit transactions. This economic dominance allows the junta to fund its war efforts and suppress opposition, not least by launching airstrikes against civilians in resistance strongholds. To break this “nexus,” Turnell calls for broader international sanctions targeting the CBM to restrict its ability to conduct transactions internationally, thereby paralyzing military spending. That means global blacklisting of Myanmar’s state-owned and crony banks to cut off the junta’s access to international markets, including arms procurement. After U.S. sanctions on the state-owned Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank (MICB) and the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) in 2023, the junta simply switched to another state-owned bank, the Myanmar Economic Bank (MEB), for its international transactions. Read more at:
