Myanmar’s “Transition Moment” : ODA Donors’ Technical Assistance/Cooperation

After years of externally imposed international isolation, Myanmar has finally begun a genuine liberalisation of its political system. In the international ODA regime, aid for capacity building is termed technical assistance, and economists such as Paul Collier have argued convincingly that ODA-financed technical assistance could determine the success or failure of such reforms in transition countries. Without such assistance, the chances of reversal are greatly increased. This paper will investigate the technical assistance given by donors, both its total value and its composition. The basic argument of this paper is that donors’ support for Myanmar, in the field of technical assistance, is dramatically short of any amount that could significantly benefit the reform process