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Myanmar money, Myanmar kyat, Myanmar money
exchange
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- The Myanmar currency is the Kyat.
The Myanmar
money is
somehow volatile. Jumping up and down in
rather big steps, changing the value within
1 week for 10% and more is not seldom. The
Myanmar currency is not convertible and
problem prone anyway.
When the US and other government imposed
economic sanctions some time ago it ended in
a devaluation of around 30%. Currently the
exchange rate to the dollar at the black
market in Yangon is 1$ = 980 Kyats, the best
rates for changing money one can get at the
Bogyoke Market.
Since also the private banking system -
which was in his infancy state anyway -
crashed some times ago, moving most
private banks into closing down operations,
its a difficult time for the kyat. If
someone wants to buy something and use kyats
they have to bring kilos of banknotes with
them. Quickly filling up a lets say potato
sack since the biggest nomination is 1000
kyat, but this is less than a dollar.
Myanmar money bill
counting machines are also not very common
that means easily a chafe on the fingers on
a bigger transaction.
- As you can see
life in Myanmar related to the currency is
not so easy.
It is particular
dangerous for money changer, they are
focused by the authorities as the culprit.
Every time the kyat is doing a substantial
nosedive the authorities round up a couple
of them and punish them quite
bad, throwing them into the jail. They are
blamed of playing with the money and coursing
the havoc. |
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That leads to the
situation that many money changer are constantly
on the run and a cat and mouse game is on, so
they cant find them, its a Kafkaesque situation. A other thing on
this subject, when someone arrive at the airport
there are some official money changer in the
arrival hall, never change money there, they
will only give you about half of the actual
black market rate.
The best to change money is to go to the
Bogyoke
market and ask in one of the shops, they will
help or tell you where to go, don't listen to
the guys whispering ..change money.. they will
cheat you, ask at least at 2 places.
A other big problem related to the money is one
cant use any credit card in Myanmar Burma to
substitute the currency problem somehow. After
the US etc. imposed economic sanctions all
financial transaction channels where cut. That
means no
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credit card, no wire
transaction, no money movement in
and out of Myanmar Burma.
Since there is always a way around
sanctions now the system works
somehow like the Pakistani and
Indians are doing it for already a
very long time.
If someone wants to send money abroad they bring
the money physically to a person in Myanmar ,
this person informs his friend, lets say in
Singapore he has received a certain amount and
maybe tomorrow someone get in touch
with this Singapore contact and the Singapore
contact pass the money to the particular person,
that works quite well but naturally is clumsy
somehow.
Current exchange rate (Aug 2011) is 1US $ = 880,- kyat.
and 1 FEC is 850,-. |
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all at e-books
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