High Performance Government in Myanmar

Under pressure to do more with less, many governments strive to become High Performance Governments and to, ultimately, deliver the most effective public services in the most efficient manner. In this report, we will address what it means to be a High Performance Government, and introduce a framework to define and understand some of the key features of a High Performance Government.

We will then apply this framework to Myanmar’s context to conduct a high level review of its public service’s governance structure. Specifically, we will examine three of its functional areas – Public Finance Management, Infrastructure Development, and Public-Private Partnerships.

While Myanmar has made tremendous improvements in some areas, a number of challenges remain. Having recently opened its economy to foreign investment, it is grappling with weak public finance management and a high budget deficit. In addition, it faces a pressing need to ramp up the coverage and quality of its infrastructure, and to reduce inefficiencies in its public-private partnerships.

To support Myanmar in building its own High Performance Government, a few high-level recommendations for the way forward were also provided. It is our hope that these ideas would be useful for government leaders as they develop actionable plans to tackle these challenges and ultimately deliver higher quality public services to their citizens – today and tomorrow.