Little Singapore in Burma

I first heard about it about 1 month ago on Singapore's free paper "Today". The news suggested that Singapore listed YOMA Strategic Holdings Ltd's share price increased due to its activities in the open-up Burma. The news highlight a town development called "Star City" that has been started by YOMA. Nothing more information other than project name. Few days ago, Myanmar local media website uploaded about the Star City Development as a form of good property investment. It said the Star City would be joint developed by SPA/FMI group of companies and YOMA Strategic Holding Ltd. SPA/FMI will own 30% of share while 70% go to YOMA who will invest S$ 91.00 millions. The project will have two major phases, one for residential and another for commercial. The Star city is designed to serve 25,000 residents and target to finish on 2020. There would be 8,000 to 9,000 residential flats and the first phase has been starting now. The sale is open now to public and the price range from 48 million Kyats (S$ 75,000) to 140 million Kyats (S$ 218,750).

The spokesman from SPA said they mainly target to the medium and high income customers. S$ 200,000 is good enough to buy a resale HDB flat in land scare Singapore, I think. Thus, I don't think world's least development nation's medium people afford to buy such expensive flat. Probably there may certain be some super-rich community who can afford that price in Burma since its wealth gap has been wider during last 2 decades. There have seem no medium layer of people in Burma. Two apparently extremes only exist, one super riches and another very poor. The project name itself seem meant to Myanmar's ordinary people as a dream to take a star from sky. It's really dream for an ordinary to be owned. Anyway, we have to welcome such high-end property development as it could create some jobs for our people as well as can plug the gap for the lack of infra-structure for potential foreign direct investment companies. If the Star City project success, there might be so many of its kind going to follow its step and will increase some life style of our country.

From the first glance of project's model on local media website, I thought it look like Singapore's HDB apartment and going to be little Singapore in Myanmar's soil. Time will prove how Burmese are rich and crazy with owning property as an value asset. S$ 91 millions can be deemed a pocket money for cash-rich country like Singapore and it might be worth risk with such amount. Hopefully, from this pioneer project, Myanmar will enable to convince some more investors from the city state who is currently ranked 3rd in the list of World's wealthiest countries in the world. Probably, Myanmar SMEs and cronies own property development companies will gain a good experience from this international standard estate. One of my colleagues was interested to buy one flat in the Star City and compile related data from fellow citizen agent. I herewith share some photos from the brochure of Star City for my friends who are interest with the project.