According to statistics from the Myanmar Ministry of Commerce, from October 1 to February 5 in the 2020/21 fiscal year, the export volume of industrial manufactured products dropped sharply to US$2.45 billion, which is in line with the previous fiscal year. A decrease of US$2.28 billion compared with the same period last year. In the same period of the 2019/20 fiscal year, the total export of industrial manufactured products was US$3.63 billion. Myanmar’s manufacturing industry is mainly concentrated in the garment and textile industry based on cutting, manufacturing and packaging (CMP). The Ministry of Commerce said that as of the first quarter of this fiscal year, Myanmar’s garment exports fell by more than 25% compared with the same period last year.
Due to the shortage of raw materials caused by the new crown epidemic, more than 100 CMP garment factories have been temporarily closed, and another 64 factories have been permanently closed, compensating about 25,000 workers. The Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population said the data does not include factories that have yet to settle workers’ wages. Jascob A. Clere, head of the EU MyasdfsnKu Fund, said that as of October 12, 2020, the fund had paid 5.2 billion kyats to unemployed garment factory workers, with a total of 67,810 aid payments.
The Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) will say that foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into many industries including the garment industry. In investment proposals, MIC gives priority to manufacturing and labor-intensive industries. Myanmar mainly exports CMP garments to Japan, Europe, South Korea, China and the United States. According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, CMP garment exports in 2019/20 were US$4.798 billion. Although the ready-made garment industry was in trouble due to order cancellations by European countries and suspension of trade by Western countries during the epidemic, exports rose last fiscal year. In the 2015/16 fiscal year, CMP’s garment exports were only US$850 million. Exports amounted to approximately US$2 billion in the 2016/17 fiscal year. This increased to approximately $2.5 billion in the 2017/18 financial year and to $1.1 billion in the April-September 2018 period. Exports surged to $4.6 billion in the 2018/19 fiscal year. </p
