It is a blazing hot Saturday afternoon and the exhibition yard outside Yangon showing industrial products from Guangxi is deserted. The monsoon rain has yet to break and the heat is shimmering off the trucks, tractors and cement mixers.
'It's far too hot for anyone to come out here today,' said Leo Pann Lin, a regional sales manager for a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-listed Chinese company Sinotruk, as he rests in the shade.
'But we are not worried. There will be very good business in Myanmar for us - of course it will be more and more competitive, but we will be well placed to compete,' said Pann, whose sales region covers the markets of Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia as well as Myanmar.
'We already have a network in place and that will be important as big international firms come in. Most of all we are medium quality, but very price competitive - and price will be very important in this developing market.'
Sinotruk's subsidiary is already selling more than 1,000 dump trucks and cement mixers a year as Myanmar's infrastructure programmes and mining operations gather pace. Over time, Pann says, he is confident that Myanmar could be a better market for his products than the more advanced sectors in Indonesia or Vietnam.
Large Chinese excavator and bulldozer manufacturer LiuGong Machinery was also showing products. Regional sales manager Andy Zhong Wen expresses similar confidence as he anticipates increased competition from Japanese, South Korean and US heavy industry firms. Improving quality coupled with price competitiveness and an after-sales network already on the ground are natural advantages for Chinese companies, particularly when it comes to big government tenders.
'Competition will be a test for us ... but more business can only be good for everybody,' Zhong said.
