Country Report Myanmar April 2009

Summary

The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, the ruling military junta) will focus on protecting its grip on power, and will continue its policy of using violence and intimidation to contain its opponents.
There is little prospect that the junta will release Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the main opposition organisation, the National League for Democracy (NLD), ahead of the election that is planned for 2010.
The UN will keep up its efforts to persuade the junta to implement genuine political reform. Meanwhile, it remains unlikely that the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will take punitive action against the junta.
The government remains focused on spending heavily on the military, with few (if any) initiatives in the pipeline to support households and businesses or to stimulate the economy in the face of the global economic downturn.
Official data may continue to show real GDP expanding at an implausibly rapid pace, but the Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts that growth will remain weak in 2009-10.
Based on the official price series, inflation will fall in 2009-10 from the high that it reached in 2008, but it will remain in double digits.

The NLD has issued a special statement calling for dialogue without preconditions with the SPDC.
In March the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, submitted a highly critical report of conditions in Myanmar to the Human Rights Council.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions has announced that the detention order keeping Aung San Suu Kyi under house-arrest is in violation of Myanmars own laws.
Tax revenue has continued to rise rapidly, at least in nominal terms, but there still appears to be a lack of financing capacity or will on the government's part to implement a stimulus package to support the domestic economy.
Industrial production by state-owned enterprises showed a mixed performance in the first eight months of fiscal year 2008/09 (April-March); natural gas output fell by 8.6% year on year.
The consumer price index rose by 23.5% year on year in November, the slowest rate in two and a half years.
Myanmars exports grew by a sluggish 5.1% year on year in January-November 2008, while imports jumped by 25.6%.

This report covers the following industry codes:
SIC Code: 80
NAICS Code: 62