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Myanmar's Bilateral Trade with ASEA



Myanmar's Bilateral Trade with ASEAN Members Up in 6 Months
:
Xinhua, Rangoon, 25 September 2000. Myanmar's bilateral trade
with five other member countries of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) --Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia
and the Philippines --totaled 851.54 million U.S. dollars in the first
six months of this year, rising by 7 percent over the same period of
1999, according to the latest figures published by the country's
Central Statistical Organization.

These trade accounted for 42 percent of Myanmar's total foreign
trade during the period with its import from these five ASEAN
countries amounting to 724.92 million dollars, while its export to
them valued at 126.62 million dollars.

In 1999, bilateral trade between Myanmar and other ASEAN
member countries reached 1.508 billion dollars, representing
42 percent of the country's total foreign trade in the year.

Meanwhile, during the six-month period, there were no investment
coming into Myanmar from these ASEAN member countries as
shown in the figures except Malaysia with 9.832 million dollars
although such investment took up 42.65 percent in 1999.

******************************

[Rising trade's a good thing, isnt it? The generals probably think it's
wonderful, and proof of their economic prowess.  But then I noticed
that imports and exports did not quite balance.

I'm not much of a mathematician, but my little on-screen calculator
does its best, and divided 126.62 into 724.92 and got 5.725.
Doesn't this mean that Burma imported almost 6 times what it exported
in ASEAN trade?

I then subtracted the two figures and got 598.3. Isn't this is what's called
a trade deficit? Almost $600million trade deficit in ASEAN trade in 6 months?

And then I checked the China/Burma trade figures for the 1st 6 months
of 2000, kindly provided by Xinhua last week, and saw that China imported
$59.296 million from Burma over the same period and exported $230.609
million worth of goods. Doing the same arithmetic as before, the division
gave me 3.888  -- Burma imports almost 4 times what it exports to China,
and the  subtraction told me that the deficit for those same 6 months was
171.3 million.

Adding 171.3 million and 598.3  told me that Burma's China/ASEAN
trade deficit for 6 months was $769.6 million.

-- It'll take a lot of oil and gas and magic to cover that, won't it?

Could someone dig out  the corresponding figures for last year,
so we can see the economic progress the generals are so
pleased about?

But really, what does this all mean?  How  do they
stay afloat? -- or am I doing the wrong arithmetic?

-- Bemused in Geneva]