WAY FORWARD The three sectors covered in this report- Finance, Telecom, and Public Utilities have the potential to positively impact the growth of urban microentreprenuership in Myanmar. But their outreach so far, to urban poor micro-entreprenuers (MEs), has been limited. One of the outcomes from last year’s study on micro-entreprenuers in India, Bangladesh and Sri lanka, was that there was a need for these three sectors to identify MEs as a target market which they could not because there was no way of identifying them. One of the reasons identified was the lack of business-registrations that identifies MEs (Service Design in Telecom, Electricity and Governance for BOP MEs, 2013). This holds true for Myanmar as well. Below are some insights on the contextual nature of urban BoP MEs that highlights how one can go about solving specific challenges in these sectors while pushing for the use of ICT. Family, friend and neighbourhood networks continue to play a big role in encouraging and supporting the establishment of a micro-entreprise. It is through these networks, that micro-entrepreneurs learn about new business/job opportunities and receive financial support if they have migrated to another city. Close-knit social ties are made possible in urban Myanmar, not only because of strong networks, but the structure of urban governance itself. The foremost institution in the structure of urban governance, is the national government, followed by divisions (state equivalents), then townships, then quarters then wards (100 houses) and then clusters of 10 houses. Through this study, it was observed that most information travelled through the local government bodies and through word of mouth. It is the quarter, ward or 10 household leader who gives away most of the information about the free immigration projects for national ID card, family registration card, SIM card lottery system, micro finance institutions and more. There was a lack of transparency in processes such as generation of electricity bills, business registrations and driving licenses. MEs did not have clarity about the slab system according to which they paid for electricity and got inflated bills at times. 81 Most of the informal financial systems were built on trust, which was observed in peer group savings where people saved money with the group leader everyday and knew all other members of the group. Most of them doubted the credibility of the banks as they had heard about some of them shutting down which is one of the reasons why they did not save in banks. People socialized over games such as cane ball (played like football with a ball made out of cane), carrom, scrabble, cards and so on. A lot of information exchange also happened at the bus/train station, in the ferry, tea/ beer cafes, during occasions such as the Pagoda festivals, funeral ceremony and so on. Some of the MEs also got information from newpapers, journals, television and radio. MEs valued time and it seemed that mobile phones would have a tremendous potential to support activities that are perceived as time consuming. MEs interviewed across the five locations, preferred intermediary services that would save time. Group savings were more popular than bank accounts, because the leader came around and collected money on an everyday basis. Paying electricity bills to an intermediary, or the car service that collected money was preferred over paying bills at the electricity office. Driving licenses, when applied for, were also through brokers who were paid a service fee. Although, literacy rate is high (92.7% as per the World bank, 2012 report) but very few people especially MEs could understand or speak in English. Few of them used Burmese language to operate their phones which they downloaded from internet with the help of the mobile shop owner or their peers however, a lot of them faced information gaps because of English being the language to operate phone.