While residents of Myanmar protest over electricity – sometimes on pricing, other times on access and most recently on environmental concerns and Chinese involvement – foreign investors are watching Myanmar’s opening economy with hungry eyes. It’s a country with a huge population, low electrification rates and a robustly growing GDP that desperately needs more reliable energy. Myanmar allows power producers to export the bulk of the power produced domestically to neighboring countries, despite its own unmet demand. But legal roadblocks, opaque regulatory structures, a highly subsidized electricity program and an angry populace only boost the risk profile for independent power producers (IPPs) and foreign investors.

With the loosening of sanctions, interested investors are arriving from outside Myanmar’s neighborhood. In April of last year, after opening its Asian operations, Florida-based APR Energy identified Myanmar as a key area for growth. This is the first American power company to enter since the sanctions were eased APR Energy is building a 100MW gas-fired power plant about 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside of Mandalay making it one of the largest thermal power plants in the country.

While investments from China, Thailand, Japan and South Korea remain strong – and analysts say interest is as much about a geopolitical play for dominance in the region as it is about financial returns and producing power