Myanmar

A

Labor

An estimated 27.4 million people were employed in the civilian economy in 2005. The largest portion, 63 percent, worked in agriculture, forestry, and fishing; 25 percent were in services; and the remaining 12 percent was employed in manufacturing, construction, and mining. A significant portion of the working-age population (those 15 to 59) was engaged in other informal economic activities, such as the black market.

B

Agriculture

Some 15 percent of the total land surface of Myanmar is suitable for farming, and only 2.8 percent is irrigated. Farmers own their own land but must sell part of their production to the government at a very low fixed price. Myanmar remains an important rice producer, based on the annually flooded paddy lands of the Irrawaddy delta and the irrigated areas in Upper Myanmar. An estimated 22 million metric tons of rice were harvested in 2005. While the greatest land area is devoted to rice, significant amounts of land are also planted with sesame, peanuts, and a variety of beans, as well as sunflower, sugar cane, corn, cotton, and wheat. Although the amount of land cultivated for most crops was increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s, productivity fell, in part because less fertilizer was used. By the beginning of the 21st century, use of fertilizers had rebounded somewhat, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN) reported food production was growing quickly. Generally, the terms of trade for Myanmar’s agricultural exports (their world price compared to the prices of manufactured goods that Myanmar imports) have been declining.

Myanmar is one of the world’s major producers of opium, a substance used in the production of heroin for illegal drug trafficking, mainly to Western countries. The drug trade within Myanmar is carried on largely by Sino-Burmese and Shan warlords in the Golden Triangle area bordering Thailand, Laos, and China. In the mid-1990s more than 60 percent of the world’s heroin supply reportedly came from Myanmar. In 1997 the government of Myanmar agreed to participate in a UN drug-control project to reduce the illegal production and trafficking of opium. Both production and area harvested for opium reportedly declined in the country in the late 1990s. In 2001 Myanmar again became the world’s top supplier of opium as the supply from Afghanistan, which had become the leading source, decreased dramatically.

C

Forestry and Fishing

The forests of Myanmar are an important source of wealth, especially in teak and natural rubber. The timber extraction in 2005 was 42.5 million cu m (1,503 million cu ft). In the early 1990s the teak harvest along the border with Thailand, which had banned its own harvest in order to preserve the future supply, greatly exceeded the sustainable yield and the government had to cancel contracts with Thai loggers. Important tree products, in addition to rubber, are a sticky gum called lac, from which lacquerware is made, quinine, and cutch, the source of a dye.

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Fish, including shrimp, are caught for local consumption and are a main source of protein in the diet. Freshwater fish are preferred, but the government is now encouraging saltwater fishing. In 2004 the total catch in the Indian Ocean was estimated at 1,091,740 metric tons. Much of that catch was caught by Thai trawlers.

D

Mining

Myanmar has a rich and varied supply of minerals. Most of the mines are located in the mountainous areas in the west and along the Tenasserim coast. Such precious stones as jade, rubies, and sapphires are mined, as are copper, nickel, silver, lead, and zinc. Since some of the resources were located in rebel-controlled areas, the political stabilization of the early 1990s has increased foreign investor interest in mining these natural resources.

In the early 1900s the Burma Oil Company was a major world producer of petroleum. Because petroleum production fell during the 1980s, the government invited foreign companies to prospect for oil both on land and in the sea. Signing bonuses paid by oil companies were one of the main sources of foreign exchange for the government after the collapse of the economy following the political turmoil of 1988. So far searching on land has produced no great finds and several of the companies, along with the principal company, Amoco Corporation, have withdrawn. In 2004 some 5.5 million barrels of crude petroleum were produced. Also, after extensive natural gas resources were discovered in the Bay of Bengal, French and American companies joined in a venture to construct a pipeline from the Andaman Sea to Thailand across Myanmar’s Tenasserim region.

E

Manufacturing

Rice milling and the processing of agricultural products are the chief manufacturing enterprises. In order to spur the industrial sector of the economy, the government has started a steel reprocessing mill, a jute mill, a brick and tile factory, and other plants. Lumber mills, petroleum refineries, sugar refineries, plants for extracting vegetable oils, flour mills, cotton mills, and textile and tobacco factories are also in operation. Labor costs for export goods are estimated by foreign investors at about one-tenth those of Thailand and one-half those of Vietnam. However, in production for local consumers, Myanmar factories cannot compete in price with Chinese goods streaming across the now open northern border. Private investment under the open market system has gone more into resource extraction rather than local industry.

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