Myanmar's business community remains nervous about the move, especially if the kyat increases in value.
Now there is a true black market, where the kyat is trading at more than 200.
The value of their remittances has been further eroded by the appreciation of Myanmar's currency, the kyat.
The government has also raised the official price of petrol from 25 to 180 kyat a gallon.
"Executives are concerned about the overvalued kyat, banking regulations, but not about politics, " says James, who attended the meeting.
In 1987 the government simply abolished some of the larger denominations of kyat banknote, wiping out many people's life savings.
When, after a few days, it allowed foreign-exchange dealings to resume, it insisted on a rate of 180 kyat to the dollar.
In Myanmar, cash is king, queen and ace, and your greenbacks best be squeaky-clean and creaseless (local kyat notes bear more scars).
FORBES: Visa Touts Plastic, Mobile Payments In Cash-Only Myanmar
The government meanwhile printed kyat to buy dollars at the market rate.
The dollar surged in value against the kyat and the foreign-exchange certificates.
"Even now we cannot breathe" with the dollar around 800 kyat, says Khine Khine Nwe, deputy managing director of garment maker Best Industrial Co.
The street value of the Myanmar currency, the kyat, fell last year by more than 80%, reaching 380 to the dollar at one point.
Shopping means walking around with a big wad of 1, 000-kyat notes.
Remarkably, this may actually ease price pressures, because rationing, which had pushed the old black-market price up to 330 kyat a gallon, has been relaxed.
The small size of the economy means a modest inflow of cash could destabilize the kyat and pose a challenge for the central bank to respond.
"Even now we cannot breathe" with the currency set at around the 800 kyat-to-the-dollar level, says Khine Khine Nwe, deputy managing director of garment makers Best Industrial Co.
The country currently has no electronic market for the kyat.
At unit level, military complicity in both narcotics production and transport has been long-standing, a situation aggravated by the collapse of the kyat and dire conditions in the field.
Among the risks, he said, was that the kyat would keep increasing in value as more foreign dollars rush in to take advantage of business opportunities there, hurting exports.
The official rate settled at about six kyat to the dollar, but many businesses continued operating at unofficial rates that in recent years have been closer to 800 kyat to the dollar.
Bankers and officials familiar with the move have said in recent weeks that the kyat will likely be set between 800 kyat and 820 kyat to the dollar, which is close to the prevailing unofficial street rate and far from the official rate of around six kyat.
Details of the change, announced Wednesday in the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper, remain unclear, including the exact value of the Myanmar kyat when it is floated Sunday, which also is the day of a key parliamentary by-election contested by famed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.
The lack of a developed financial market has the flipside of making it difficult for the central bank to inject or withdraw kyat liquidity or to intervene in the dollar market as a way of combatting any sharp moves in the exchange rate, as most of it occurs with back-alley money changers.
The country's current foreign-exchange system, which involves a fixed "official" exchange rate that makes the currency, the kyat, more than 100 times as valuable against the dollar as the black-market rate, is so confusing that many foreign companies have refused to re-enter the country even if Western leaders ease sanctions against Myanmar, the country also known as Burma, as expected later this year.
应用推荐