Burma or Myanmar is presumed one of the region’s most natural-resource rich countries. It earns billions of dollars yearly exporting of natural resources such as oil and gas, teak, gems, and minerals. Sending natural gas overseas is the country’s particular prime source of foreign revenues.
Myanmar has been exporting gas to Thailand from the Yetagun and Yadana offshore blocks located in Mottama Gulf since 1998 and 2000 respectively. In 2008 BP ranked Myanmar as the largest gas exporter via pipeline in the Asia-Pacific with gas exports totaling 9.7 bcm in 2007, making it the 11th largest gas exporter in the world that same year, according to the report - Burma’s Resource Curse: The case for revenue transparency in the oil and gas sector – issued by the Arakan Oil Watch which is an independent, community-based, non-governmental organization operating in Burma/Myanmar.
The bulk of profitable resources in Myanmar, including oil and gas, are unearthed from ethnic states and sold out overseas especially to neighboring countries. The resource owner states have never been enjoyed their quota revenues from the deal of those natural resources since the military authorities monopolized the whole extractive industries.
These states – such as Kachin, Shan, Kayah, Karen and Mon states - as well have never been enjoyed rewarding funds for social or environmental damages despite the fact that they suffer the troubles related to environmental destruction and human rights abuses that go with the extraction and export of resources. It is regrettable that decision on the subject of the possession and exploitation of natural resources or the equal sharing of earnings still remains as main reason of domestic war in Myanmar nowadays.
People as well as the Upper and Lower Parliaments have no knowledge about how revenues from the sale of gas resources are spent since the previous junta’s time. However, it is commonsensical that government spending for social improvement is stingy while the military continues enjoying the lion’s share of the state revenues.
Unfair sharing of resource benefits is also contributing to ethnic conflicts. Although a so-called civilian government is now running day-to-day affairs, the military remains unwaveringly above the law under the 2008 constitution. Many analysts believe that the role of military conglomerate in Myanmar’s economy and in managing country’s huge oil and gas revenues remain unknown and unfettered.
According to the Arakan Oil Watch (AOW), Foreign Oil Companies engaging in Myanma’s oil and gas sector also refuse to publish how much and how they pay the military regime.
The most crucial question of the political reform many foreign governments overlook is the economic monopolization of the Myanmar military elite. They have been exploiting the country’s natural resources under the names of the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) and the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) while the country’s average population has suffered from various social miseries.
President U Thein Sein’s reform has reached little at grassroots since farmers and workers are in depression because their land and properties have been unlawfully confiscated by the military, local authorities and government cronies. As a result, the people are suffering severe unemployment in a country where five million unemployed citizens have already migrated to neighboring countries in search of job. Most of the migrants are in Thailand and Malaysia due to unemployment and food shortage problems in their own land.
Burma remains one of the world’s least developed countries, and was ranked 149 out of 187 countries in the 2011 UN’s Human Development Index concerning health, education and income. Burma was ranked 172 out of 176 along with the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index in 2012 – fifth from bottom above Sudan, Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia.
If the President is truly reform-minded, he needs to make sure transparency and first-rate management of the country’s largest source of foreign income - revenues from the export of oil and gas - and cope with military monopoly in the market based economy. With military involvement in the country’s economy, regardless of good management upon sustainable development, natural resource sector in Myanmar will draw out the resource curse situation longer.
President Thein Sein made a speech at the ceremony of Rural Region Development and Socio-economic Improvement in Yangon in last June. In his address, the President said that utmost efforts had been made for the success of political, economic and administrative reforms during his two years in office. While carrying out the development of peace and stability, national reconciliation and the rule of law, the nation had faced unforeseen challenges and difficulties. However, the government is determined to overcome these challenges and difficulties, the President said.
The President pointed out that without political stability economic development cannot be realized and without socioeconomic development political stability cannot be achieved, because politics and economy are interrelated. It seems a good view made by a president. But, the most important thing he should also perceive is to quarantine the military from the country’s politics and economy. Being military involvement in country’s politics and economy, it will be impractical creating a political stability with economic development.
In order to control extractive industries’ revenues properly, the government must provide a yardstick for checking the use of those revenues. It’s also necessary to set up a responsible revenue management system. Such a check-and balance system should take the type of a constitutional mandate followed by more specific nationwide legislation that extensively control the use of the benefits come out of natural resources.
Although the extractive industries’ foreign earnings are biggest in the country, there has been no revenue transparency under both the previous military regime as well as the current U Thein Sein government. The government’s credit-and-debit accounts concerning the extractive industries’ foreign earnings are not publicly revealed; the part of military enterprises - the Union of Myanmar Economic Holding Limited (UMEHL) and the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) - play craftily in revenue management and expenditure remains untouchable. Moreover, no check-and-balance with defense budget spending causes swelling the resource curse of Myanmar.
According to a report by the Arakan Oil Watch, billions of dollars in revenues from the sale of natural gas have gone unrecorded in the country’s public accounts and been siphoned off by corrupt military rulers, leaving the nation with some of the worst social indicators in the world and embroiled in conflicts over natural resources.
source: Asian Tribune
http://www.asiantribune.com/node/64899
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