Myanmar President U Thein Sein left Nay Pyi Taw Friday night for Washington to pay an official visit to the United States, official sources said.

On his first trip to Washington as a Myanmar head of state in 47 years, U Thein Sein will meet his US counterpart Barack Obama at White House on next Monday and discuss with him democracy building in the Southeast Asian nation, the White House said before U Thein Sein's departure from Myanmar.

"The president looks forward to discussing with President Thein Sein the many remaining challenges to efforts to develop democracy, address communal and ethnic tensions, and bring economic opportunity to the people of his country, and to exploring how the United States can help," spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

During U Thein Sein's visit in Washington, two agreements on trade and investment are expected to be signed.

U Thein Sein represents the first Myanmar leader visiting Washington following that of military leader U Ne Win to Washington in 1966 at the invitation of then US President Lyndon Johnson.

U Thein Sein visited New York last September, opening up a new chapter to the bilateral ties between the two countries since establishment of diplomatic relations at ambassadorial level.

During the visit, he met with then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sideline of the U.N. General Assembly, repeating his dedication to democratic transition and describing the US's recognition as a shot in the arm to Nay Phi Taw to continue its chosen path.

In recognition of the continued progress toward reform, the US then took a next step in normalizing commercial relationship between the two countries by easing US restriction on import of Myanmar goods into the US

As a follow-up in last November, Obama paid a six-hour historic working visit to Myanmar as the first sitting US president in Myanmar-US relations, meeting with U Thein Sein, speaker of the House of Representatives USwe Mann and opposition leader and parliamentarian Aung San Suu Kyi.

As a significant measure, the US authorized financial services with four Myanmar banks in February this year.

The US Chamber of Commerce and his Myanmar counterpart also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in the month in a bid to promote bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.

According to Myanmar official statistics, the US investment in Myanmar amounted to 243.56 million US dollars in 15 projects, accounting for merely 0.6 percent of the total as of March 2013 since Myanmar opened to such investment in late 1988 and ranking the ninth in Myanmar's foreign investment line-up.

Bilateral trade between Myanmar and the US reached 190.96 million US dollars in 2012, of which Myanmar's export to the U. S. accounted for 16.47 million dollars while its import stood at 174.49 million dollars.