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David Oliver Abel ( my, ဒေးဗစ် အေဘယ်လ်; 28 February 1935 – 18 January 2019) was a Burmese economist, retired Brigadier General in the
Myanmar Army The Myanmar Army ( my, တပ်မတော်(ကြည်း), ) is the largest branch of the Armed Forces (''Tatmadaw'') of Myanmar (Burma) and has the primary responsibility of conducting land-based military operations. The Myanmar Arm ...
and former
cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filing ...
minister. He served variously as Minister of Commerce, Minister of Finance and Revenue, and Minister of National Planning and Economic Development. At one time, he ran all three ministries simultaneously. He was considered the country's economic czar throughout the 1990s. Abel retired from the
State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...
and vacated his position as the Minister of the Chairman's Office on 25 August 2003.


Early life and education

Abel was born in 1935 in Insein, near
Rangoon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military governme ...
, but his family's roots were in
Maymyo Pyin Oo Lwin or Pyin U Lwin (, ; Shan: ), formerly and colloquially referred to as Maymyo (), is a scenic hill town in the Mandalay Region, Myanmar, some east of Mandalay, and at an elevation of . The town was estimated to have a population of ...
(now Pyin Oo Lwin). Abel's father, Alfred T. Abel was a Burma Railways engineer, while his mother Daw Chai, was a senior school teacher. Abel's father is an ethnic Indian