By victimizing the Burmese people, Myanmar's brutal military regime is stifling the nation's progress towards becoming a potential juggernaut of international trade.

Burma is the world’s largest exporter of teak, a relatively expensive timber used in weather-resistant products such as boat decks and outdoor furniture. The leading supplier of both sapphires and jade globally, Burma produces 90% of the world’s rubies.

Renamed Myanmar by the current government, Burma also has a strong agricultural base as well as vast natural gas and fishery reserves.

With its strategic location bordering on China and India, two of the world’s fastest growing economies, one might assume that resource-rich Burma is on the fast track to becoming one of international trade’s emerging superstars.

Instead, the bulk of Myanmar’s estimated 53 million people live in poverty.

Cyclone Nargis

After Cyclone Nargis carved its path of destruction through Burma’s most populated areas, the rumoured death toll was predicted to run as high as 100,000. Millions of Burmese are dying from thirst and hunger.

The United Nations is conducting an urgent appeal for US$178 million in an effort to save as many cyclone-ravaged people as possible. Contaminated water and tainted food supplies make deadly epidemics a frightening possibility.

Cyclone Nargis puts the spotlight on why Burma remains poor despite its strong potential in international trade. The root cause is Myanmar’s corrupt military government.

Myanmar’s Ruling Military Junta

Headed by psychological warfare specialist Than Shwe and his 12 senior generals, Burma’s brutal military rulers governs the South East Asian country with an iron fist. According to the BBC, the junta ruthlessly censors Burmese media from subjects ranging from international trade to sports reporting. Criticisms of the Burmese government and reports of natural disasters are rigorously filtered. Similarly, the junta strictly controls Internet access in Burma excluding more and more foreign electronic services.

Transparency International ranks Burma among the world’s most corrupt nations.

Burma’s Isolationist Trade Policies

Some analysts call Burma the hermit of international trade, a country that suspiciously restricts its imports and exports to nearby countries tolerant of their cultural values while avoiding international opportunities.

Relations between the United States and Burma are best described as poisoned. After Burma’s military coup in 1988 and subsequent violent beatings of pro-democracy demonstrators, the U.S. imposed broad trade sanctions against Burma including a 2003 American ban on all Burmese imports. The U.S. also banned the export of financial services to Myanmar.

For its part, the junta distrusts the West because of what some see as indentured slavery under British colonial rule that ended in 1948.

Limited Burmese Trade Statistics

Few credible statistics are available on Burma’s international trade.

The Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook estimates that Myanmar exported about US$6.6 billion in 2007, while it imported some $2.6 billion worth of merchandise. Burma’s largest export partners are its close neighbours including Thailand (48.8% of total Burmese exports), India (12.7%) and China (5.2%).

Burma imports the most from China (35.1% of total Burmese imports), Thailand (22.1%), Singapore (16.4%) and Malaysia (4.8%).

The CIA acknowledges that Burmese trade statistics are unreliable and probably grossly understated, given junta censorship and well-established black market channels into Thailand, India and China that mostly profit the ruling elite.

Burmese Rice for Emergency Supplies?

Before Cyclone Nargis hit last in early May 2008, it was hard to associate Burma with starvation or rice shortages.

Burma is the world’s seventh largest rice producer, with a rice harvest of 25.2 million tons in 2007. This accounted for 4% of last year’s global rice supply in 2007. Burma farms far more rice than the Philippines (2.4%), and almost doubles the rice production of Brazil (1.8%), Japan (1.7%) and the United States (1.4%).

Self-sufficient in rice production, Burma was also the world’s 15th largest rice exporter in 2004 shipping 150,030 tons (0.5% of global rice exports). However, analysts believe that much of Myanmar’s rice is smuggled into Thailand (10 million tons, 34.5% of global rice exports), India (4.5 million tons, 16.5%) and China (901,550 tons 3.1%) where it is exported to the rest of the world.

Distrustful of Burma’s corrupt regime, many countries are reluctant to provide rice or any other form of assistance to Burmans who now need medicine, food and clean water to survive. To ensure that the true victims of Burma’s corrupt international trade policies are attended to, nations like France insist that international workers must distribute these supplies directly to the Burmese people.

International Trade Photo Opportunities

So far the ruling junta has defied the United Nations’ pleas to allow outside relief workers to assist in providing emergency rescue operations to those most in need. Instead, Burmese government officials have seized all international rescue supplies.

Junta-backed soldiers then distribute food provisions in containers with junta candidate names written on them to solicit support for a “Yes” in a referendum that critics say will strengthen military rule.

The junta is also taking maximum advantage of photo-taking opportunities, to take credit for rescue operations while shifting the world’s attention away from the true victims of Burma’s isolationist import and export policies – the hardworking Burmese people.