n the midday haze outside the Thingaha Hotel in Naypyidaw, the new capital of Myanmar, the national flag droops alongside the Stars and Stripes and General Electric’s corporate logo. Inside the Grand Ballroom the staff scurries with last preparations for a meticulously planned gala dinner. Heading up this coming-out party is Stuart Dean, a blue-eyed, rawboned American and GE’s chief for Southeast Asia.
Just in from Malaysia, where he is based, Dean turns to his PR director to check on the guest list. “We’ve got eight deputy ministers and five ministers coming tonight. It’s 140 people,” says the director. “Is the Lady coming?” Dean asks. “Yes.” “Confirmed?” “Yes, and she’s sitting next to you.” “Wow,” he says. ‘The Lady’ is Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of non-violent resistance to thuggish dictatorship and recently declared her interest in running for president. She isn’t a fan of free market enterprise, so her attendance tonight is a big deal. Myanmar—known for centuries in the West as Burma—is one of the planet’s final frontiers for capitalism, and it’s in desperate need of lighting and power, railways and ports. It’s easy to see why GE, one of the planet’s icons of capitalism and a leading provider of infrastructure, wants in. Both entities desperately need growth. Myanmar, because most of its 60 million or so people (the last census was in 1983) earn less than $500 a year. GE, because its stock has been flat for the dozen years of CEO Jeff Immelt’s reign. At $150 billion (sales), GE is looking for places like Myanmar, situated in a strategic saddle between India, China and Southeast Asia. But the symbiosis largely ends there. GE’s efforts in Myanmar offer a window into difficulties even the most adept companies face in countries new to the idea of free markets. It’s an awkwardly slow dance, filled with corrupt officials, crony capitalists and a stifling bureaucracy. GE’s dinner diplomacy helps illustrate that. The Aung San Suu Kyi event follows a one-day workshop for the Ministry of Electric Power, which ended, as seems the norm here, inconclusively. The ministry would like more time to study GE’s proposals to replace worn-out industrial gas turbines it built years ago. Perhaps, the bureaucrats counter, the company can offer technical training and support? Dean raises his eyebrows but keeps his smile. 
The evening’s meal had similar fits and starts. Canned piano music greets Burmese officials wearing black collarless jackets with large cuffs over colourful trouser-length wraps. Dean hovers in GE’s welcoming line and then escorts the poker-faced Lady, in a moss-green silk dress with a fuchsia scarf, to the anteroom, as local entrepreneurs gape, starstruck.
Once the entrées are served, Dean climbs onstage. His mangled effort to speak Burmese earns polite laughter. “The most exciting story in Asia in the last 10 years is the emergence of this country on the world stage,” he says. “We want to be a long-term partner of Myanmar.” He then invites Suu Kyi and the five ministers to join him for photos, before the Lady darts into an SUV. Has her head or heart been moved? “Maybe she’s realised that companies are going in anyway and there’s some way to take advantage of that,” Dean later muses. Over postprandial drinks with his team, Dean explains that Suu Kyi asked him if GE could help renovate Yangon General Hospital, a century-old building. Dean replied that GE is supplying equipment to many public hospitals, but Suu Kyi, as befits a politician, pressed him on her pet project. “You got played,” jokes a colleague. Burma, taken independent in 1948 and taken over by a junta in 1962, had long been a pariah. Abortive rebellions were brutally suppressed, dissidents were imprisoned and foreigners discouraged from visiting. US-led sanctions heightened its isolation. |
Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/cross-border/why-ges-myanmar-venture-has-not-been-easy/35715/1#ixzz2d3KeCJWF
