Focus on Agriculture, Says Retired Official

Economic reforms are said to be missing a priority target

Ua Thein Swe is a retired director at Myanmar’s Ministry of Planning and Finance and a former associate executive director at the World Bank.

Currently working with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), he tells reporter Thit Nay Moe that the agricultural sector should be prioritized in Myanmar’s economic reforms.

The government has been instituting reforms, but there seems to have been little change in the agricultural sector, would you agree?

That’s right. Despite a lot of talk about small and medium-sized enterprises, the reform process can only really benefit the general public if it includes agriculture. The economy should be upgraded focusing on reforms in the agricultural sector, which employs 70 percent of the whole population. As long as we don’t address this sector, the reforms will not succeed.

Myanmar is no longer a top rice-exporting country, while the extractives sector has risen.

What’s your opinion on this?

According to the statistics of the World Bank, the percentage of GDP from agricultural products decreased from 57.3 percent to 30.4 percent between 1990 and 2010. In the industrial sector, 7.9 percent has increased to 20.3 percent in the same period, and in the services sector, the share has gone from 7.2 percent to 19.5 percent.

So, the waning of the agricultural sector compared to the industrial sector seems to be true. Theoretically, the decrease of the agricultural sector and the rise of mechanized farming will bring farmers into factories in urban areas. But, here in Myanmar, there is also the rise in the extraction of natural resources like petroleum and natural gas at the same time as the fall in the value of agricultural products. Selling off resources may lead to failure because, in the long term, these natural resources are not renewable and may one day run out.

In most countries, a reform process is done systematically, step by step: agriculture, then industrialization and then service provision. In this process, basic agricultural production must rise in both quality and quantity before it leads to industrialization. But here, the agricultural sector has decreased, and while our rice is still top quality, we are not exporting as much as we used to.

Monetary institutions like the World Bank and the ADB have come to Myanmar, but they have not provided effective assistance to the agricultural sector, while just focusing on sectors that are less difficult. Most of the assistance is focused on energy or electricity. They are also important sectors, but the possession of land for farmers, production and distribution of good quality crops and the free growth of a market for crops are more critical. The government needs to prioritize this. It is critical to create job opportunities for our citizens, without only making jobs in urban areas or having people go abroad.

In the reform process, laws providing for the possession of land should be accurate and justifiable. If good and fair management cannot be implemented or if good reforms in the agricultural sector are not done, undesirable results will follow.

In which sectors should Myanmar use international assistance?

The World Bank and the ADB have provided loans for projects like electricity and road construction, which make sense and can be completed quickly. But to eliminate poverty, the World Bank should provide techniques and supervision on, for example, how to make quality tea leaves and how to get high-quality fertilizers to tea leaf farmers. Instead, with the involvement of cronies, road and school construction has been implemented, benefiting cement and tar dealers. Locals are still poor and it is ineffective.