In order to take part in this collective agreement the armed groups had to have previously signed a bilateral ceasefire with the government.
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The truce is the fruit of more than two years of negotiations and was a key goal of reformist President Thein Sein before November elections likely to sweep his army-backed party from power.
“The National Ceasefire Agreement is a historic gift from us to the generations of the future”, Thein Sein said at the signing ceremony.
State-backed newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar hailed the deal with the headline “Peace starts now” on Thursday’s front page, adding it may herald a “fully fledged peace process that will end more than 60 years of civil conflict”.
That has upped the stakes for getting ceasefire deals with all ethnic armies, one of Thein Sein’s biggest pledges.
“The United States commends all sides for their ongoing efforts to bring an end to the longest-running civil conflict in the world”, the US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement on Thursday.
The party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to do well at the November 8 polls, though the democracy icon herself is barred from becoming president by the military-drafted constitution.
Among the groups which have not signed are the largest armed group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), and the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), whose Kachin Independence Army (KIA) controls large areas of north-eastern Kachin state and regularly clashes with the Burmese army.
The U.S. remained concerned about reports of continued military offensives in the Kachin and Shan states and lack of humanitarian access to 100,000 displaced people in those areas, he said.
Myanmar, a former British colony known as Burma, has been torn apart by armed ethnic conflicts since gaining independence in 1948.
Major rebel groups in the north, including the Kachin Independence Army, have refused to sign the ceasefire.
Most of the groups who have signed the agreement – Karen National Union, Democratic Benevolent Karen Army, Karen Peace Council, Arakan Liberation Party, All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front, Palaung National Liberation Organisation, and Chin National Front – hail from the Karen region bordering Thailand.
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The eight groups that signed were removed from Myanmar’s lists of unlawful and terrorist organizations, but critics say none of the country’s political prisoners, including members of those groups, were released.
