YANGON, Feb. 03, 2026. Myanmar’s currency is quoted as one number on official screens and another in the channels businesses actually use to move dollars. The Central Bank of Myanmar’s reference rate still sits at K2,100 to the U.S. dollar, but bank trading windows and licensed platforms are clustered far above that level, reflecting a market where access, not just supply and demand, determines the price of foreign exchange.

That spread between the administrative anchor and bank clearing levels has turned into an everyday business constraint. Importers and manufacturers face a higher effective cost base when they source dollars through approved channels, while exporters and service firms often find their kyat revenues rising more slowly than their dollar-linked inputs. In boardrooms and factory floors alike, the question is rarely what the exchange rate is. It is which rate applies to us today.

The result is a multi-track currency system that behaves like a set of parallel markets. One track is the CBM reference rate, used as a policy anchor and as a reference point for parts of the regulated economy. A second track is the bank rate used in online trading platforms and exchange counters, where institutions post quotes that better reflect scarcity and compliance hurdles. A third track is the informal cash market, which is harder to verify in real time but has historically been the first to absorb shocks, enforcement campaigns and shifts in confidence. A fourth track, increasingly watched by traders and remittance networks, is the kyat price of dollar-pegged stablecoins such as USDT, which provides a digital proxy for the cost of moving dollar-like value when traditional access tightens.

USDT is also where some readers get confused, because two different “USDT to kyat” numbers circulate online. Global crypto converter pages often display USDT converting to kyat near the official reference level, which reflects the pegged administrative framework rather than Myanmar’s market frictions. On the ground, traders say the relevant number is the peer-to-peer price. On the Binance P2P marketplace, typical offers cited by local users are around K3,990 to K4,050 per USDT, a level closer to bank remittance quotes and widely treated as a more realistic proxy for street demand than global converter screens.

Myanmar’s exchange rate fragmentation did not begin overnight, but it accelerated after 2021. In 2019, a regional surveillance report by the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office described the kyat as relatively stable around the mid K1,500s per dollar for much of the first eight months of the year, a period when importers could budget and quote with fewer distortions. The post 2021 environment replaced that predictability with volatility and controls. Reuters reported that money changers were quoting around K2,700 per dollar by late September 2021, up from around K1,695 at the start of that month and roughly K1,395 on Feb. 1, 2021, the day the military seized power.

By 2022, the authorities moved to harden the official anchor. A bulletin carried on Myanmar’s government portal said the central bank directed the foreign currency exchange rate to be set within a narrow band around the CBM reference rate starting from Aug. 10, 2022, with the CBM reference rate set at K2,100 and a cited selling price of K2,106. The same government report noted that external market rates at the time were far higher, citing buying prices around K3,400 and selling prices around K3,500 in early September 2022.

The gap widened dramatically during bouts of stress in 2024. Reuters reported in early June 2024 that the kyat hit around K4,500 per dollar on the black market as the authorities arrested dozens in an effort to stabilize the currency. Later that summer, Reuters reported the kyat fell as low as K7,500 per dollar on the black market before recovering to around K6,000, a swing that traders and retailers said pushed up the cost of essentials and worsened living standards.

The following year brought stabilization rather than reunification. In its Myanmar Economic Monitor dated December 2025, the World Bank said the kyat appreciated by about 13% against the U.S. dollar in the year to October 2025 in the parallel market, reversing part of the prior year’s depreciation. That improvement eased headline pressure, but it did not eliminate the structural wedge created by a controlled official reference rate and constrained market access.

For businesses, the real exchange rate is not only the posted kyat quote but what it buys. In Myanmar, inflation and the pass-through from exchange rate moves into fuel, transport, and imported inputs mean a stable administrative rate can still coincide with rapid erosion in purchasing power, because key prices tend to follow the market-clearing cost of foreign currency rather than the reference rate.

This multi-rate system changes corporate behavior in ways that resemble the playbook seen in other controlled FX regimes. Firms shorten payment terms, demand more frequent repricing, and shift contracts toward hard currency where permitted. Import-heavy businesses build larger buffers of inventory or dollars, tying up working capital. Exporters focus on timing and settlement, trying to align receipts with periods of improved access or lower premiums. Companies that can document flows and maintain bank relationships gain speed, while smaller traders without the same compliance capacity pay more, wait longer, or move to less predictable channels.

Myanmar’s kyat has therefore become less a single market price and more a measure of access, policy intensity, and confidence. The official peg at K2,100 remains a political and administrative anchor. Bank clearing rates in the mid K3,600s show where regulated liquidity is priced in early 2026. The informal market, when it spikes, reveals stress first. And the stablecoin proxy, imperfect as it is, has become another scoreboard that businesses watch when conventional channels tighten.

Source links used by the MBJ newsroom file - 

Central Bank of Myanmar FX page: https://forex.cbm.gov.mm/index.php/fxrate
Myanmar Citizens Bank foreign currency exchange page: https://mcb.com.mm/business/international-banking/foreign-currency-exchange/
CB Bank website: https://www.cbbank.com.mm/en
CB Bank online trading platform page: https://www.cbbank.com.mm/en/online-trading-platform
Reuters (Sep 29, 2021): https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmars-junta-powerless-currency-drops-60-four-weeks-economy-tanks-2021-09-29/
Myanmar government portal (Sep 2022): https://myanmar.gov.mm/news-media/-/asset_publisher/Jb7SCMXVsWI1/content/kyat-stands-around-k3-500-in-fx-market-despite-cbm-reference-rate-of-k2-100
Reuters (Jun 4, 2024): https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-junta-arrests-dozens-bid-stabilise-currency-2024-06-04/
Reuters (Aug 21, 2024): https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/myanmar-households-crippled-currency-tumbles-record-low-2024-08-21/
World Bank Myanmar Economic Monitor (Dec 2025): https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099120625204042781/pdf/P507203-7c4662b6-c1d8-4c3c-9b0c-d4835f2763cb.pdf
AMRO Annual Consultation Report on Myanmar (2019): https://amro-asia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Annual-Consultation-Report-on-Myanmar-2019_-for-publication.pdf
Myanmar Market Price website: https://myanmarmarketprice.com/
Myanmar Market Price (About Us): https://myanmarmarketprice.com/pages/about.html
Myanmar Market Price: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.david_khant.MyanmarMarketPrice
Binance P2P USDT/MMK: https://p2p.binance.com/en/trade/AYAPay/USDT?fiat=MMK

Finance

Myanmar Kyat has four prices - Official, Bank, Street, and USDT