The autarkic approach of the Revolutionary Council (RC) era was modified when the “Long-Term and Short-Term Economic Policies” (LTSTEP) were adopted as the economic manifesto of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) that led the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma after March 1974. However, the state-led import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy which had been continuously pursued since Myanmar's independence remained unchanged within the Twenty-Year Plan's (TYP) framework. As such, it entailed acceptance of official development assistance (ODA) and private sector participation in selected industrial activities.

INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY, POLICIES AND PLANS

The aim of Myanmar's industrial strategy in the BSPP framework was to create an industrial base utilizing Myanmar's natural resources and agricultural products for an eventual transformation into an industrialized country. The emphasis was on resource-based industrialization (RBI) while incorporating an “export-substituting” element that entailed increasing the export of value-added (through industrial processing) products. Nevertheless, the legacy of inward-orientation in economic outlook together with restrictive external trade policies foreclosed the EOI (export-oriented industrialization) option.

The long-term policies enunciated in the LTSTEP document were adopted as guidelines for the FYPs and their annual components. Together with the list of ownership vis-à-vis industrial classifications stipulated in the LTSTEP document, the sectoral objectives and policies enunciated in the latter formed the basis of state-led industrialization in the TYP (1974–94) period.

The FYP plan guidelines for the industrial sectors endorsed by the corresponding Pyithu Hluttaw sessions are shown in Table 7.1. They reflected the BSPP's perception on means and ends for transforming Myanmar into an agriculture-based industrial economy by 1994. They also demonstrate the persistence of resource constraints, especially capital and energy shortages, and that each successive FYP encountered essentially the same problems and shortcomings thereby eliciting similar exhortations. These guidelines suggest that underutilization of industrial assets and lack of financial and technological resources were major problems for state industrial enterprises (SIEs) throughout these four FYP periods. Given such constraints, rationalization of the SIEs with less emphasis on new projects and more on full utilization of existing factories should have been carried out from the outset. However, only in fiscal 1983/84 did the state decided to give priority to “completing ongoing projects” and new ones that “were less capital intensive, had short gestation periods, utilized domestic resource base, and had good export potential”.