ECONOMIC HIT
The UNODC estimates that Myanmar’s opium economy is worth about US$2 billion – the equivalent of up to 3 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2021.
Despite the spike in production, farm gate prices for opium have also soared to around US$280 a kilogram, the report said – a 69 per cent rise on the previous year.
This compares with a farm gate price of around US$203 in Afghanistan, the world’s leading opium producer.
But the report said that higher incomes from opium are not translating into greater buying power for farmers, because of higher petrol and fertiliser prices as a result of the Ukraine war.
A combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the coup hammered Myanmar’s economy with an 18 per cent contraction in 2021, according to the World Bank.
Around 40 per cent of the population was living in poverty in 2022, and Douglas said that financial hardship had forced many labourers to leave urban areas to work in poppy cultivation in the countryside.
Farmers need outside support to boost their livelihoods growing other crops to compete with the opium economy, UNODC Myanmar country manager Benedikt Hofmann said.
“Opium cultivation is really about economics, and it cannot be resolved by destroying crops which only escalates vulnerabilities,” he said.
The report cited figures from Myanmar’s Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control stating that 1,403ha of opium poppies had been eradicated by the end of last year – a 70 per cent decline on the previous year.