1st Convergences Myanmar Forum: Role Of Private Sector For Sustainable Development

Aiming to address development challenges, the 1st Convergences Myanmar Forum was kicked off on Friday.
The forum was come up from the 9th edition of the Convergences World Forum in Paris in 2016.
Then Myanmar delegation went to Paris, resulting its 1st time event in Myanmar supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French Embassy to Myanmar.
Ambassador, French Embassy to Myanmar, H.E. Olivier Richard: “You have representatives from some NGOs, civil society, the academics, business and government; they can exchange views in workshop on very concrete issues in Myanmar. It's not the place where take the political decision. It's a place where you exchange views and in the end, each side will understand better the other, and hopefully may be they can go on working in the future.”
In this one-day meeting, experts and professionals, representing the public, private, academic, NGO and civil society sectors attended and discussed the potential solutions to achieve a “Zero Exclusion, Zero Carbon, and Zero Poverty.”
The role of private sector’s importance in the country’s sustainable development was talked in the Cooperation for development.
CEO, Parami Energy Group of Companies, Ken Tun: “Here, Myanmar has challenges, and Myanmar also has opportunity. The first is we all need to change our mindset. At the same time, we also need to have a platform; the platform of trust, where local farmers or the rural area people, they want to have the access, the opportunity outside, or they want to get employ or all this. How can people like private sector, NGO, and government, and institution can help, It's like how to build the platform of win-win system.”
Society Programmes Manager, British Council, Mi Mi Myo Win: “The private sector involvement is very important because the government cannot do everything alone. The discussion I had is about social enterprise which is like, social enterprise is a business, you know just like the normal business. They are trying to address the social and environmental problem.”
Cooperation for development, digital innovation, urban planning and financial inclusion were discussed as multi-stakeholder panels in the forum.