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How Covid-19 affects economy more than you think?

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How Covid-19 affects economy more than you think?

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How immigrant workers can effect due to covid-19 impact? Share your opinion, please,

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Covid-19: why the economy could fare worse than you think

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How Covid-19 threats on Myanmar Economy

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Myanmar has seen a moderate domestic impact from the global COVID-19 outbreak, recording just 85 cases as of April 17. However, the country's reliance on international trade, investment, and technology means it will face near- and medium-term economic challenges that it is inadequately equipped to deal with alone.

Export volumes for simple manufactured goods have seen the biggest impact. The garment sector, which employs over 700,000 workers and accounts for $4.6 billion in export revenue - or 10 percent of all exports - has faced both supply and demand shocks. China supplies 90 percent of raw materials for the sector; however, exports to Myanmar were halted between January and March. Just as supplies were returning to normal in April, demand for Myanmar garment products collapsed.

Myanmar exports 70 percent of such products to European countries, most of which have been enforcing lockdowns and closing nonessential retail stores. As a result, 25,000 workers from over 40 garment factories have been laid off in Myanmar so far. Recognizing the hardship this is causing, the European Union on April 9 announced a 5 million euro ($5.46 million) aid package for garment workers.

In dealing with such headwinds, Myanmar has limited fiscal capacity to stimulate the economy. Indeed, in financing the measures to tackle COVID-19, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has called on businesses and citizens to donate to a public fund. The government has also allocated 100 billion kyats ($72 million) to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the garment and tourism sectors. The sum, however, is paltry when compared to neighboring Thailand's $76 billion stimulus package. Moreover, Myanmar's fund only deals with immediate hardships, while there is no plan to support the economy in the coming months.

Myanmar is therefore looking abroad to support its economy. Yet early indications show the foreign private sector may be unable to provide the desired investment flows. Outbreaks in key investment partners have already caused delays to projects valued in the billions of dollars.

In March, the Request for Proposal deadline for the $1 billion Yangon Elevated Expressway was extended to April 30. Bidders from China, Japan, and South Korea requested an extension due to domestic COVID-19 outbreaks, while the Wuhan-based China Gezhouba/Great Genesis Gems Consortium withdrew from bidding. Further delays to getting construction underway appear inevitable.

Furthermore, the development of the $8-10 billion Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and $137.1 million Dawei-Htee Kee Road linking the zone to Ratchaburi in Thailand has been delayed. The zone's developer, Bangkok-based conglomerate Italian-Thai Development, has been suffering financial losses due to the outbreak and is scaling back on all projects.

With such domestic and international private sector constraints, investment flows from state-backed East Asian agencies or enterprises will now be vital. While acknowledging projects will see disruption, foreign officials have been reiterating their commitment to getting developments underway or overseeing ongoing ones to completion in Myanmar.
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Japan International Cooperation Agency's Myanmar Chief Representative Sakakura Noriji said on March 25 that the agency would move ahead with infrastructure, urban, sewerage, and power distribution projects, for which a 120.9 billion yen ($1.1 billion) loan agreement was signed for in January. The loan is part of the 800 billion yen ($7.3 billion) pledged by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his November 2016 visit to Myanmar.

In early April, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced $6.78 million would be provided for 22 Myanmar projects under the Beijing-led Mekong-Lancang Cooperation Initiative. Regarding projects under the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai said the 33 agreements signed during President Xi Jinping's visit in January would continue to progress from the planning to implementation stage.

Major projects include the $1.3 billion Kyaukphyu deep-sea port and SEZ developed by the CITIC consortium, which comprises four Chinese state-owned enterprises in addition to Thai-based Charoen Pokphang Group.

South Korean Ambassador to Myanmar Lee Sang-hwa also reiterated his country's support for infrastructure projects, saying "as soon as we overcome [COVID-19], we will expedite all cooperation projects to bring them back on track." Notable South Korean state-backed projects include the $154 million Yangon-Dala Bridge, Dala New City, $125 million Mandalay-Myitkyina Railway upgrade, and South Korea-Myanmar Industrial Complex.

Looking ahead, the Myanmar government may look to expedite projects funded by foreign state-backed agencies or enterprises to keep investment flowing in. In any scenario, however, such investments are unlikely to be enough to shore up the entire economy and the country must formulate a medium-term economic plan to deal with the uncertainty in the months ahead.

Diplomat Brief

Weekly Newsletter
N Shah Suraj Bharat is a Yangon-based transport infrastructure analyst for FMR Research and non-resident fellow for Policylab Indonesia. The views expressed are his own.

Get first-read access to major articles yet to be released, as well as links to thought-provoking commentaries and in-depth articles from our Asia-Pacific correspondents.

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Advertisement Myanmar has seen a moderate domestic impact from the global COVID-19 outbreak, recording just 85 cases as of April 17. However, the country's reliance on international trade, investment, and technology means it will face near- and medium-term economic challenges that it is inadequately equipped to deal with alone.

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for relieving of Covid-19 impact

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Nieuwsbericht | 15-05-2020 | 07:07

After the World Health Organization WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic on 11 March, the Myanmar Government scaled up its measures and on 13 March, it elevated its Committee for Prevention, Containment and Treatment to the national level in order to control and limit the risks for the 54 million Myanmar population.

A number of precautionary public restrictions followed which came into effect from 13 March until 30 April, followed with extension until 15 May. Myanmar's Department of Civil Aviation also announced the suspension of all international commercial flights effective until 15 May.

The latest announcement came out this week on 13 May that the precautionary measures are further extended including the suspension of commercial flights from 15 to 31 May.

On the other hand, some measures concerning the business operations have been gradually relaxed. Here's a situation update in brief about the effects on the overall economy, agriculture sector and the development of the work plan for Myanmar's economic relief.
Business Operations
From April 20-30, a joint inspection period for factories was set by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population and the Ministry of Health and Sports. The workplace safety and health inspection was done in accordance with the prevention of Covid-19 guidelines for the factories instructed by the Ministry of Health and Sports. Reopening is allowed after passing the inspection, with a priority given to pharmaceuticals and food manufacturing factories. See the announcement in details. On 3 May, Myanmar classified in total 21 businesses as essential to continue operations. The list included port services, warehousing and wholesales, export and import and the fisheries sector.

After a closure for more than 2 months, Myanmar's commercial capital city Yangon and its second largest city Mandalay are now set for a gradual reopening of shops, restaurants and markets towards the end of May in line with the requirements by the Ministry of Health and Sports.
Impacts are inevitable
All restrictions together clearly have negative impacts on businesses and socio-economic sectors, including international trade (border, air and maritime). Myanmar's economic growth in 2020 shows a sharp downturn, from an estimate of 6.4% to just 1.8% according to the International Monetary Fund.

Myanmar's agriculture sector is also at high risks, with fears for reduced food production, triggered by reduced access to finance, services and inputs like seeds and fertilizers, expectations of lower sales, complicated logistics to markets and consumers with domestic lock-downs at from international, national to regional and townships level.
Food and especially nutrition security is clearly a concern if farmers are unable to raise money and cannot start sowing for new crops timely before the monsoon season. The growing season for monsoon paddy, vegetables and other agriculture activities in Myanmar normally start in May. See the news article for more details.

To support farmers, the Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry announced on 5 May that monsoon agriculture loans by the Myanmar Agriculture Bank will start on 15 May, the loan rate is at 150,000 MMK (appr. 98€ ) per acre (0.4 ha). The interest rate has also been reduced from 8% to 5% per annum.

In addition, Myanmar's fisheries sector is reportedly hit hard with a sharp drop in international orders from the neighboring countries and the EU. The Myanmar Fisheries Products Processors and Exporters Association MPEA is projecting the largest loss in the sector export revenue in history for a six month period between March to August.

Meanwhile, The Integrated Seed Sector Development Myanmar program (ISSD-M) conducted an online survey 'Covid-19 Quick Seed Scan' with seed sector stakeholders to access the constraints in functioning and implications throughout the supply chain. The survey was carried out in the period April 20-30 in collaboration with the Seed Division of the Department of Agriculture, Myanmar and the Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, Wageningen University and Research (WUR-CDI). As a result, four main alert areas have been identified 1) mobility of farmers and seed entrepreneurs 2) Seed affordability for farmers 3) Seed production operations 4) early generation seed supply. In the 2nd week of May, ISSD-M organized an online focus group discussion to follow up on the survey findings. Private seed companies, farmer representatives, development partners, NGOs and government discussed the alert areas in details with a focus on the action planning. See the indications and result summary . As soon as these actions are further discussed with the Myanmar governments and planned in more concrete details, we will report on them.
Economic Relief Plan
To bounce back the inevitable effects on the country overall economy, the Government of Myanmar has established a national Committee for Remedying Economic Effects Covid-19. Myanmar Investment Commission MIC further approved 37 more investments amidst the crisis within the period from end March until early May. On 27 April Myanmar released the Covid-19 Economic Relief Plan (CERP), outlining the 7 goals, 10 strategies, 36 action plans and 76 measures. CERP is attached for your reference.

Specific actions mentioned in CERP for the agriculture sector are cash and lending support for planting and retention, total 100billion MMK (appr. €65million). The target groups are farmers, small agri-processors, agribusinesses and seed farmers. The agriculture loans for farmers have been reduced from 7% to 5%.

The overall CERP covers a broad range of sectors and the implementation cost is estimated USD 2 billion, according to the Ministry of Planning, Finance and Industry. Myanmar will receive international aid and financing support from a combination of public finances, Central Bank finances and from the World Bank to implement CERP. The measures will be partly financed by means of cutting the 2019-20 budget of the Government ministries, each up to 10%.

In the coming weeks, it is expected to see a plan to relax the restrictions by the Government for business continuity and further detailing of CERP is expected to better implement the proposed action plans and measures. We will report more on the latest information and the impacts on the agriculture sector in the next article.

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After the World Health Organization WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic on 11 March, the Myanmar Government scaled up its measures and on 13 March, it elevated its Committee for Prevention, Containment and Treatment to the national level in order to control and limit the risks for the 54 million Myanmar population.

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The EU and North America account for about 45 percent of Myanmar's aquaculture and fisheries exports - which were forecast to be worth $750 million in 2020 - while China and Thailand account for the remaining 55 percent.

Myanmar's aquaculture exports include pangasius and shrimp

"Exports have collapsed. All international orders have been cancelled and we have not received any new orders from the European Union (EU) since they are all locked down," U Myo Nyunt, secretary of the Myanmar Fisheries Products Processors & Exporters Association (MPEA), told the Myanmar Times.

The drop in demand will affect businesses throughout the seafood supply chain. "At first, those operating cold storage facilities did not have any income and some had to shut down. Now, factories are not allowed to open and jobs are dwindling," said Nyunt.

With losses mounting in April and May, the MPEA expects fishing and aquaculture activities to grind to a halt from June to August, while the aquaculture sector could face longer disruption if farmers are unable to restock during this time.

As a result, the MPEA is projecting the largest loss in history for the sector for the six months between March and August and the industry is now calling on the government for more aid.

"Tourism operators and garment manufacturers are receiving government loans and aid from the EU as a result of COVID-19. But aquaculture and fisheries are not in the government's list of sectors most impacted by the virus and we have not received EU subsidies even though we contribute significantly to exports," said Nyunt.

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Myanmar's aquaculture exports hit hard by COVID-19

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The EU and North America account for about 45 percent of Myanmar's aquaculture and fisheries exports - which were forecast to be worth $750 million in 2020 - while China and Thailand account for the remaining 55 percent. "Exports have collapsed.

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26 million Americans now unemployed from COVID-19

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Coronavirus update: The latest COVID-19 news for Monday June 1 | ABC News

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မြန်မာအစိုးရကCovid 1

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မြန်မာအစိုးရကCovid 19ကူးစက်မူ့ကိုထိန်းချူပ်ဖို့ကြိုးစားတဲ့အနေနဲ့မြန်မာနိုင်ငံနဲ့ထိစပ်နေတဲ့နယ်စပ်ဂိတ်တွေမှာကုန်ပစ္စည််းတွေနဲ့လူအဝင်အထွက်သွားလာမှုတွေကန့်သတ်နေသောကြောင့်နယ်စပ်ကုန်သွယ်ရေးမှာထိခိုက်မှုတွေရှိနေပါတယ်။လောလောဆယ်Covid 19 ကာလမှာမြန်မာနိုင်ငံရဲ့စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများကျဆင်းနေပေမဲ့၂၀၂
၁မှာ ပြန်လည်ဦးမော့လာနိုင်တယ်လို့ခန့်မှန်းရပါတ

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private ကျောင်းတွေမှာ online class ကို ခေတ်စားလာတာ တွေ့ရပါတယ်
public ကျောင်းတွေမှာလည်း
online class တွေ ပိုပြီး ဖွံ့ဖြိုး တိုးတက်လာနိုင်လာပါတယ်
covid ကြောင့် ပညာရေးမိသားစုတွေအနေနဲ့ ICT နဲ့ ပိုပြီးအကျွမ်းတဝင်ရှိလာတာကို တွေ့ရပါတယ်

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ကိုဗစ်ကြောင့်မြန်မာ့စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများကိုအပြင်းအထန်ရိုက်ခတ်နိုင်ပါတယ် လုပ်ငန်းများပုံမှန်လည်ပတ်နိုင်ရန်လဲ အရင်ကထက်များစွာလှုပ်ရှားရုန်းကန်ရမှာဖြစ်ပါတယ်

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The COVID-19 situation causes an overall slowdown in Myanmar's economy and its trading partnering countries.

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We don't know when and how Covid-19 will end.

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We don't know when and how Covid-19 will end.

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According to WTO,  we have to be lived with Covid-19 virus like other contagious diseases such as flu and HIV. There are some interesting questions to ask about this?
How Covid-19 impact on our social relationship and daily life?
Can we trust others we are closing related to that they are not infecting Covid-19?
How and what businesses will be affected due to these social changes?

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Covid-19 နှင့် ပညာသင်ကြားရေးစနစ် အပြောင်းအလဲ
1- ပညာရေးဟာပြောင်းလဲဖို့ရာတကယ်လိုအပ်နြေပီဆိုတဲ့တိုက်တွန်းမှုတွေဖြစ်ပေါ်လာပါမယ်
2- ပုဂ္ဂလိက-အစိုးရပညာရေးဖက်စပ်ဆောင်ရွက်မှုဟာပိုပြီးတော့အရေးပါလာပါမယ်
3- ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ်ခွဲခြားဆက်ဆံမှုဟာပိုမိုကျယ်ပြန့်လာနိုင်ပါတယ်

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See what do they talk about Covid-19 impact

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University of California Television (UCTV)

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COVID-19: Economic Impact, Human Solutions

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See this article

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Myanmar has seen a moderate domestic impact from the global COVID-19 outbreak, recording just 85 cases as of April 17. However, the country's reliance on international trade, investment, and technology means it will face near- and medium-term economic challenges that it is inadequately equipped to deal with alone.

Export volumes for simple manufactured goods have seen the biggest impact. The garment sector, which employs over 700,000 workers and accounts for $4.6 billion in export revenue - or 10 percent of all exports - has faced both supply and demand shocks. China supplies 90 percent of raw materials for the sector; however, exports to Myanmar were halted between January and March. Just as supplies were returning to normal in April, demand for Myanmar garment products collapsed.

Myanmar exports 70 percent of such products to European countries, most of which have been enforcing lockdowns and closing nonessential retail stores. As a result, 25,000 workers from over 40 garment factories have been laid off in Myanmar so far. Recognizing the hardship this is causing, the European Union on April 9 announced a 5 million euro ($5.46 million) aid package for garment workers.

In dealing with such headwinds, Myanmar has limited fiscal capacity to stimulate the economy. Indeed, in financing the measures to tackle COVID-19, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has called on businesses and citizens to donate to a public fund. The government has also allocated 100 billion kyats ($72 million) to support small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the garment and tourism sectors. The sum, however, is paltry when compared to neighboring Thailand's $76 billion stimulus package. Moreover, Myanmar's fund only deals with immediate hardships, while there is no plan to support the economy in the coming months.

Myanmar is therefore looking abroad to support its economy. Yet early indications show the foreign private sector may be unable to provide the desired investment flows. Outbreaks in key investment partners have already caused delays to projects valued in the billions of dollars.

In March, the Request for Proposal deadline for the $1 billion Yangon Elevated Expressway was extended to April 30. Bidders from China, Japan, and South Korea requested an extension due to domestic COVID-19 outbreaks, while the Wuhan-based China Gezhouba/Great Genesis Gems Consortium withdrew from bidding. Further delays to getting construction underway appear inevitable.

Furthermore, the development of the $8-10 billion Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and $137.1 million Dawei-Htee Kee Road linking the zone to Ratchaburi in Thailand has been delayed. The zone's developer, Bangkok-based conglomerate Italian-Thai Development, has been suffering financial losses due to the outbreak and is scaling back on all projects.

With such domestic and international private sector constraints, investment flows from state-backed East Asian agencies or enterprises will now be vital. While acknowledging projects will see disruption, foreign officials have been reiterating their commitment to getting developments underway or overseeing ongoing ones to completion in Myanmar.
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Japan International Cooperation Agency's Myanmar Chief Representative Sakakura Noriji said on March 25 that the agency would move ahead with infrastructure, urban, sewerage, and power distribution projects, for which a 120.9 billion yen ($1.1 billion) loan agreement was signed for in January. The loan is part of the 800 billion yen ($7.3 billion) pledged by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his November 2016 visit to Myanmar.

In early April, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced $6.78 million would be provided for 22 Myanmar projects under the Beijing-led Mekong-Lancang Cooperation Initiative. Regarding projects under the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai said the 33 agreements signed during President Xi Jinping's visit in January would continue to progress from the planning to implementation stage.

Major projects include the $1.3 billion Kyaukphyu deep-sea port and SEZ developed by the CITIC consortium, which comprises four Chinese state-owned enterprises in addition to Thai-based Charoen Pokphang Group.

South Korean Ambassador to Myanmar Lee Sang-hwa also reiterated his country's support for infrastructure projects, saying "as soon as we overcome [COVID-19], we will expedite all cooperation projects to bring them back on track." Notable South Korean state-backed projects include the $154 million Yangon-Dala Bridge, Dala New City, $125 million Mandalay-Myitkyina Railway upgrade, and South Korea-Myanmar Industrial Complex.

Looking ahead, the Myanmar government may look to expedite projects funded by foreign state-backed agencies or enterprises to keep investment flowing in. In any scenario, however, such investments are unlikely to be enough to shore up the entire economy and the country must formulate a medium-term economic plan to deal with the uncertainty in the months ahead.

Diplomat Brief

Weekly Newsletter
N Shah Suraj Bharat is a Yangon-based transport infrastructure analyst for FMR Research and non-resident fellow for Policylab Indonesia. The views expressed are his own.

Get first-read access to major articles yet to be released, as well as links to thought-provoking commentaries and in-depth articles from our Asia-Pacific correspondents.

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Advertisement Myanmar has seen a moderate domestic impact from the global COVID-19 outbreak, recording just 85 cases as of April 17. However, the country's reliance on international trade, investment, and technology means it will face near- and medium-term economic challenges that it is inadequately equipped to deal with alone.

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Study these photos

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Myanmar daily life photo - Google Search

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inle lake shutterstock china town myanmar mandalay shwedagon pagoda myanmar yangon bagan monk photography khin maung