I. INTRODUCTION
A. Public Finances Prior to 2011
Prior to 2011, spending priorities were heavily distorted, which had a large influence on Myanmar’s low level of economic and human development. For the period 2004–2009 government spending on the military was consistently higher than spending on health and education combined, with Myanmar being the only country in Southeast Asia where this was the case (Turnell 2011). The Government of Myanmar consistently ran budget deficits, with the vast majority of these deficits financed by the government-controlled central bank printing money, with the inevitable result of high inflation. The highly overvalued official exchange rate negatively impacted the economy in a variety of ways, and from a fiscal perspective meant that the true value of the income of state economic enterprises (SEEs) did not appear in government accounts, with this problem being particularly acute for SEEs operating in the gas and oil industries.