The inheritors of years of junta mismanagement will face a hard task rebuilding an economy wrecked by incompetence, corruption and greed... "The income from Burma?s great natural resource reserves is wasted on costly vanity projects while the population goes hungry and the economy sinks deeper into chaos. That?s the verdict of economists monitoring the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which erupted in mass street protests in the wake of devastating domestic fuel price rises. The military regime running Burma owes the World Bank and International Monetary Fund about US $3.5 billion, but has failed even to respond properly to a proposal by the two institutions to benefit from a debt relief scheme. ?Myanmar could not be assessed [for the scheme] due to lack of available data,” says a World Bank-IMF report. ?The authorities indicated that at present Myanmar will not be participating in the initiative and regret that they will not be able to provide the required data to undertake the assessment of their indebtedness.” In other words, Burma?s economic management is a shambles, said economist and Burma specialist Sean Turnell of Australia?s Macquarie University. ?Burma?s economic miasma is the product of 45 years of inept economic mismanagement under the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) and its predecessors,” said Turnell, in a special report of Burma Economic Watch he has compiled in the wake of the public protests and military crackdown of recent weeks..."