rice production was adopted in respect of oilseed crops such as sesame and groundnuts.
As will be described later, imports of edible oil increased dramatically after 1988. As a result,
the domestic edible oil price was lowered to a level close to that of the international price. On the
other hand, there was a remarkable increase in exports of pulses and beans, and before long, they
became Myanmar’s largest export item. In due course the domestic price of pulses increased quite
rapidly. Pulses and beans underwent a process of rapid adjustment with the international market
price. In this sense, the largest change that Myanmar agriculture has experienced since 1988 has
been departure from a closed trade regime, which had been isolating the domestic market from the
international market.
By contrast, in the case of rice, since 1988 the domestic price has been continuously repressed
at about half of the international price, although the disparity narrowed somewhat over time. On the
other hand, the indispensable inputs needed for rice cultivation (chemical fertilizer and diesel oil)
have strengthened their linkages to the international market, insofar as recently, they have begun to
be imported on a purely commercial basis. This means that the rice sector in Myanmar has itself
strengthened its linkage with the international market, albeit in a rather asymmetric way, and with
the result that in this respect, the sufferings of the Myanmar government and of the farmers have
come to converge.
It is true that even after 1988 farmers in Myanmar continued to be controlled by the ‘three
internal major agricultural systems’ inherited from the socialist period, namely the procurement
system, the planned cropping system and the state ownership of farmland, a point stressed by
Takahashi (Takahashi 2001). It can even be argued that after 1988, the government tightened these
systems to control farmers. However, at the same time, Myanmar agriculture is being forced to come
to terms with the current wave of internationalization. Given that internationalization is inevitable,
how to make the best use of its merits while at the same time minimizing its demerits is the key to
successful reform of the domestic control systems. In analyzing trends in the agricultural sector after
1988, this paper attempts to emphasize the transition to an open economy, rather than the transition
to a market economy in general. For this very reason, the paper focuses on broader measures rather
than simply domestic factors and it is hoped that by doing so, it will fill a gap in previous research.
We group the major agricultural products of Myanmar into the following four categories: export
crops, crops for import competition, crops for the domestic market and crops for state–owned