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In Pictures: Booming Yangon

As Myanmar’s biggest city becomes more attractive to investors, the poor are squeezed by rising cost of living.

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Yangon is the sixth-most expensive city for expatriates to live in the ASEAN bloc.
By Brennan O'Connor
Published On 27 Feb 2014

Yangon, Myanmar – The commercial capital of Asia’s second-poorest country is the sixth-most expensive city in southeast Asia.

Ever since the once-shuttered country opened up to foreign investors, aid groups and businessmen have clambered to gain a foothold in Yangon. The new arrivals have created a property shortage.

Affordable housing is being torn down, replaced by high-rise condominiums and office buildings. Rents have quadrupled in recent years, while local wages remain depressingly low for many.

High-rise buildings to accommodate an increase in business in the country(***)s commercial capital are replacing affordable housing.
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About one-third of children under five are malnourished.
Many spend at least half their salary putting food on the table.
Forty percent of Yangon(***)s five million people are "poor or extremely poor", according to the United Nations agency for human settlements (UN-HABITAT).
Transportation costs in Yangon have risen since the country opened up.
Myanmar President Thein Sein still has to make good on promises he made to reduce the national poverty rate to 16 percent by 2015.
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Eighty-nine percent of the population is Buddhist.
Estimates indicate Yangon(***)s population will double to 10 million over the next 20-25 years, exacerbating housing shortages.
The government pays these city workers about $2 a day to sweep the streets. A minimum wage law has been approved in Myanmar, but the exact rates still need to be determined.