The restrictions on foreign monetary exchange do not just hurt big business. They affect small businesses, too.

For example, Nyi Nyi owns a workshop in Rangoon. He and his family manufacture toys for buyers from as far away as Hong Kong. So his toy business is international, but Burma’s banks are not.

Nyi Nyi still depends on middlemen, called “hondis,” to process foreign money transactions. Foreign visitors to Burma once used “black market” money changers, and hondis are still the main method for international money transfers. But the government hopes this unsupervised, cash-based economy is ending. It plans to do this with new ATMs, Automated Teller Machines, and foreign exchange licenses for private banks.

The Burmese government has also reformed its monetary system. Burmese officials have ended the old official exchange rate. The old rate was 6 Kyat to one United States dollar. But the black market, or unofficial, exchange rate was over 800 Kyat to the dollar.

There are also plans to ease import restrictions and work continues on laws governing foreign investment.

Burma is seeking to fully link, or integrate, its economy with its neighbors in the ASEAN economic group by 2015. Foreign investors, businesses and tourists are hoping that the new banking and other financial reforms will end years of corruption and mismanagement.