After seizing state power on 1 February 2021, coup leader and commander-in-chief of the Myanmar military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, assumed the position of chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC) military regime the next day. He made his first public statement only a week later, on 8 February 2021, stating that the SAC would not change the country's foreign and economic policies, and offering assurances that Myanmar's economy would remain open to foreign investment. This was echoed by the SAC's minister for investment, U Aung Naing Oo, who highlighted on 16 February that the SAC would prioritize economic recovery from the pandemic. These pronouncements were indicative of the SAC's aspiration to legitimize its seizure of power by presiding over an economic performance better than that achieved under the National League for Democracy (NLD) during its first term in office over 2016–21.

The statements by Min Aung Hlaing and Aung Naing Oo were elaborations on the commitment to “recover the businesses caused [sic] by [the] Covid-19 pandemic as quickly as possible” that formed part of the six-point statement announcing the military's reasons for the coup. Despite these stated commitments, Myanmar's economic performance has steadily declined, as have domestic and external trust in the SAC's capacity to achieve the recovery—and attendant stability—it had promised when taking over state power in 2021. Interestingly, the SAC adapted the NLD's Myanmar Economic Recovery and Reform Plan (MERRP) as its Covid-19 response. The MERRP had been developed by the NLD as an update to and an extension of the longer-term Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan (MSDP), with a specific aim to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic had presented the NLD government with an opportunity to push through “radical” liberalization reforms with the MERRP, such as public finance reforms and liberalization of interest rates and the export sector. The SAC, however, dropped the “reform” element of the MERRP, and unveiled it instead as the Myanmar Economic Recovery Plan, or MERP, in August 2021.