1. Performance of the Agricultural Sector in the National Economy
Let us first look briefly at the performance of the agricultural sector and its role in the overall
economic development of Myanmar.
Table 1 indicates the changes in the composition of GDP by sector and annual growth rates
since the early 1980 s. The agricultural sector was surprisingly slow to lose its relative importance in
terms of its contribution to GDP, and accounted for more than 40 % of GDP even in recent years (at
1985/86 constant prices). This suggests that the agricultural sector has been growing at a pace equal
to those of the other sectors of the economy.
The table also shows that the GDP share of agriculture is significantly higher at current prices
than at 1985/86 constant prices. The discrepancy between the two widened very sharply between
1985/86-1990/91 and the divergence increased further until 1994/95. This means that agricultural
prices, which in the socialist period had been highly repressed compared to non-agricultural prices,
were ‘normalized’ by the mid 1990 s.3
In general, the rate of increase of agricultural retail prices was
higher than that of the CPI.
Table 2 shows the differences in the rate of price increase among crops in this respect. First, for