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Abstract

Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 300-314 (2003)

“Policy-Initiated Expansion of Summer Rice under Constraints of Rural Credit in Myanmar in the 1990s -Perspectives from a Village Study in Ayeyarwaddy Division-”
Koichi Fujita (Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University)

Based on an intensive survey in a village in Ayeyarwaddy Delta, Myanmar, during June 2001, this paper clarifies the rural economic changes and problems under the 'Summer Paddy Program' since 1992/93. Despite its success, it began to be constrained by the worsened terms of trade for rice cultivation, mainly due to the ban on rice exports by private traders. Collapse of the rice price since 2000 for more than one and a half years, along with the planned cropping policy, hit the farmers badly. Problems in the rural credit market, characterized by dominance of the informal sector and extremely high interest rates, also worked as another serious constraint for the capital-intensive summer paddy production.