Leveraging Marketing Opportunities In Myanmar Yields Export Sales

Home to 54 million people, Myanmar’s growing middle class makes it a frontier market with tremendous potential. In 2018, Directive 25/2018 passed, liberalizing foreign direct investment in the country. This meant that for the first time in recent history, U.S. companies can now invest in on-the-ground assets needed to import, handle and distribute U.S. agricultural products in Myanmar.

Though this was a significant step forward, there were many hurdles yet to overcome to maximize the partnership potential between the United States and Myanmar. For example, processes to obtain import permits had not been standardized, and there remains significant mistrust of imported agricultural products by many departments within the Ministry of Agriculture because of fear of displacing local farm incomes.

To address these challenges, the U.S. Grains Council used Agricultural Trade Promotion (ATP) funds to kickstart a countrywide economic study to show the government the impact of liberalizing corn imports specifically on the local agri-industrial complex. Leveraging this opportunity to engage with customers, the Council engaged with local leaders including private feed and food manufacturers; the Myanmar Development Institute; the Myanmar Livestock Federation; the National League for Democracy Central Economic Committee; and the local Department of Agriculture. The message to all of these stakeholders focused on both the industrial value of supporting corn imports and the economic benefits of using U.S. distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS).

Companies targeted by this outreach expressed appreciation for the engagement and immediately began purchasing DDGS with more confidence. These sales were enabled due to increased knowledge of U.S. coproduct nutritional value, but more importantly, the government permitting process became much more transparent and less risky after the Council’s intervention. This normalizing of the import permit process will allow imports of U.S. DDGS to expand over the long term. Overall, the Council was able to further the mission of liberalizing the feed corn industry at the same time promote the sale of DDGS.

These efforts culminated in 77,000 metric tons of sales in 2019, a 48.6 percent increase from 52,000 metric tons in 2018. The growth in exports of U.S. corn and DDGS in 2019 was 25,000 metric tons, valued at $6.4 million, over the 2018 import levels.  The Council invested $45,000 of Agricultural Trade Promotion (ATP) funds in 2019 in support of this growth, creating a return on investment (ROI) of $143 for every $1 of ATP invested.

Learn more about the Council’s work in Southeast Asia.