Myanmar garment industry is looking forward to exponential growth in exports. The growing garment industry will increase direct employment by over one million workers. This will bring not only wages to workers and profits to factories, but also increased foreign exchange, higher GDP and more tax revenue.

The first and most important step forward must be free trade agreements with the US and the EU, Myanmar’s most important potential garment customers. There are some political problems. However, by far the greatest obstacle is compliance. Not only does the country lack a statutory minimum wage, child labor in garment factories is a common feature.

On April 26, Asean and the European Union agreed to take steps to resume stalled talks on a free trade agreement between the two regions. This may be the most important step forward for the nations in Asean in the past decade.

Previous negotiations between Asean and the EU broke down in 2009 over the EU’s concerns about Myanmar’s human rights record. In the interim it entered into an FTA with Singapore and is currently involved in serious negotiations with Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Recently the EU has been very complimentary toward Myanmar, praising widespread political and economic reforms since the country emerged from outright military rule in 2011.