FR: In the focus: World Bank blames

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Subject: FR: In the focus: World Bank blames military for the ruin of the country

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Frankfurter Rundschau, 5th January 2000
[inofficial translation by the Burma Group Tübingen}

Burmese abyss

In the focus: World Bank blames military for ruin of the country

By Jürgen Dauth (Hong Kong)

The rule of military drove Burma into misery. To this conclusion comes
the economic and social report of the World Bank. Today, hunger is the
scourge of the former rice bowl of Asia.

Since the last World Bank report on Burma, which was published ten years
before, the situation of the military ruled Southeast Asian country has
significantly worsened. Just 50 years before Burma was the rice bowl of
Asia, which adjusted without problems the major amount of production
arrears in other countries of the region.

Today there live 13 million people, that are a third of all Burmese,
below the level of existence. A third of all children are underfed. Ten
per cent of the boys and girls, so the World Bank registers, live at
"the limits of physical existence". The number rows of the Burmese ruin
still continue: 30 per cent of the schoolable children are not even
given first schooling, and only 40 per cent of the boys and the girls
complete the primary school. 70 per cent of the families in the two
largest cities Mandalay and Rangoon must go several times in the year to
the pawnbroker, so that they can buy food from borrowed cash.

And guilty of all, the World Bank judges, are Burma's generals, who
cannot handle the economy. It lacks experts and assessments. Burma's
governing military got their qulifications in the battle fields, but not
at universities.

The state is like the nation - a poorhouse. There is no sufficient money
available, for education and social services, enumerates the World Bank.
What the state can  spend, goes to the blown up armed forces and
inefficient state enterprises. There are only few small businesses,
which can expand, in order to create jobs. The banks fail to give them
credits, because they cannot deposit securities.

But family enterprises of the military, however, can borrow generously,
even if it is known that they never pay back again their debts. Where
the state fails, the private sector of the economy would have to invest,
recommends the World Bank. But only the agriculture produces surplus and
contributes three-quarter to the gross national product. 92 per cent of
the Burmese work in the agricultural sector. But whatever the farmers
harvest, they must sell it to a large extent for low prices to national
export enterprises. The naked subsistence remains then.

The United Nations and the World Bank offered support to Burma. But the
western nations, which boycott Burma and which are main backers of the
international institutions, will give no more dollars as long as the
generals will make no political concessions. This would mean the release
of political prisoners and first steps toward a civilian government.

But the military refuses persistently to recognize the results of the
democratic elections in 1990. The generals know that the will of
revolution in the population is broken. The exile-Burmese in Thailand
does not have any influence on the mass of the population.

The World Bank won't be able to move anything, just like with all its
recent reports before. The military already accused the economic and
social report as "strongly exaggerated". On Tuesday, the 52nd
Anniversary of the independence of Burma, the junta expressed their
opinion on the democracy movement: These "terorrist groups" have to be
fought, said general Than Shwe.
                  

[ document of info. ]
Copyright ©Frankfurter Rundschau 2000
Document produced on 04.01.2000 at 20.45 o'clock 
Publication date 05.01.2000
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