RPT-FACTBOX-Trade, aid, heroin: Myanmar's links to the outside
Source: Reuters
(Repeats to additional subscribers) Sept 29 (Reuters) - A violent crackdown on peaceful protests in military-ruled Myanmar has drawn a chorus of protests from around the world. Nine people were officially reported killed in one day in Yangon, the former Burma's main city. Here are some facts about the Southeast Asian nation's links to the outside world. MAJOR EXPORT DESTINATIONS: ($US million, 2006) -- Thailand: $2,135 49 percent -- India: $527 12 percent -- China: $230 5 percent -- TOTAL: $4,361 MAJOR IMPORT SOURCES: ($US MILLION, 2006)* -- China: $1,328 34 percent -- Thailand: $837 21 percent -- Singapore: $620 15 percent -- TOTAL: $3,909 OFFICIAL AID: -- Myanmar received $121.1 million in official aid in 2004, or just over $2 for each of its 56 million people. By contrast, Laos received $47 per person and Cambodia $35, according to the United Nations Development Programme. SOURCES OF AID: -- China, India and Japan are key contributors. Western aid dwindled after a ruthless crackdown in 1988. The U.S. offers no official assistance and Myanmar is deep in arrears to the World Bank, which ceased new lending in 1987. -- Historically Myanmar's largest aid donor, Tokyo has withheld new aid since opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in 2003. However it still funds emergency projects and has given at least $25 million to health projects through the U.N. Children's Fund since 1999. Whether this will continue after a Japanese video journalist was shot dead in Yangon this week remains to be seen. -- Chinese aid to Myanmar was officially reported as $100 million in 2005. Unofficial estimates for assistance over the past decade run into the billions. India is said to be building up its aid to offset Beijing's influence. BLACK MARKET: -- According to most estimates, the black economy matches its official counterpart. Consumer goods are smuggled in from China and Thailand. Teak, gems, people and drugs are smuggled out. -- The backbone of the opium-producing "Golden Triangle", Myanmar is the world's second-largest producer of heroin after Afghanistan. Having been far and away the biggest producer in the 1990s, opium production has fallen by as much as 80 percent under a United Nations-backed government eradication programme. Officially, only 21,500 hectares (53,000 acres) were cultivated in 2006. Heroin goes mainly to China and Pacific rim countries such as Australia. -- As opium and heroin have tailed off, production and trafficking of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) has shot up, causing tension with Thailand. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, 19.5 million ATS pills were seized in Myanmar in 2006 out of 40 million seized in the whole of Asia. -- 1.5 million tonnes of timber, most of it famed Burmese teak, worth $350 million was shipped to China in 2005 -- Myanmar is a source for the trafficking of women, children and men for forced labour and the commercial sex trade, predominantly into Thailand, but also China and Malaysia. (Sources: Asian Development Bank, 2007 Key Indicators, Reuters, United Nations Development Program UN Office of Drugs and Crime, Global Witness)
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