"Although 40,000 companies were registered in the country, the number of companies that are really operating is just 4,000," Lieutenant General Thein Sein said in the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Most of the companies that are operating have little capital and weak access to foreign markets, he added.

Outside the main cities of Yangon and Mandalay, most provinces have only one or two registered businesses, he said.

"The state is ready to render assistance to increase the number of companies that can do business globally," he said without elaborating.

Myanmar's economy has been driven into the ground under decades of mismanagement by successive military regimes.

The country formerly known as Burma is under US and European economic sanctions because of human right abuses and the detention of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.