Yangon, Myanmar: Banks in Myanmar will soon start to allow official Myanmar workers who are currently working oversea to transfer money from Malaysia to Myanmar. Nevertheless, a manager from CB Bank, said that this system depends a lot on the people who will use the proposed overseas money transfer option. Currently it is known that there are only a few people who use banking services to transfer money to Myanmar while the rest still relying on Hundi, the old way of transferring money by private companies.
“It’s very convenient to use Hundi to transfer money into our country, Myanmar. We don’t need to worry even if our homes are located in a remote place of Myanmar. They will reach to our homes. With banks, our family needs to go to the bank to get the money. And those private banks are not in every town of Myanmar so this is a problem.”
U Phae Myint, a manager of CB Bank told that “This money transferring process cannot be achieved at the moment. We need support from the people that are employed overseas and are currently transferring money with Hundi. Currently, May Bank is providing training to all our staff and this money transferring process will start when the training has completed.”
He also stated that it is not certain whether the bank will charge the transfer fees in trial period or not. However, it is confirmed that trial period will be three months time. It is known that government has declared that there are about 600,000 workers who are officially working overseas but the Myanmar Post News Journal reported that there will be about 800,000 workers who are currently working officially overseas. The banks expected that if this money transfer process is successful, the system can transfer about 100,000 to 200,000 of foreign currencies per month.
“People will only care for their own convenience rather than government’s profit. It is true that it is safer to use banks, but private banks are not in every city and town of Myanmar. Having said that, there are some difficulties in transferring money, one of the foreign workers said. The Myanmar Post News Journal reported that Banks from Myanmar namely, KBZ Bank, CB Bank, Ayeyarwaddy Bank, AGD Bank signed a contract with Malaysia based bank, MayBank, for this money transferring process. If you are looking to transfer money from other SEA countries into Myanmar, now you can do it easily.
