Chiang Mai: While Burma 's top brass continue to line their pockets with kickbacks and self-bestowed financial rewards, the country's government is facing a burgeoning debt crisis.
Analysts and knowledgeable voices are in agreement that the top generals' persistent refusal to put governmental interests ahead of personal gain has created an economic environment inside the country where the government is no longer able to service its debts or undertake fundamental development projects essential to the state's wherewithal.
"The government is bankrupt and the generals have all the money," is the terse assessment of the situation from a foreign employee of an international non-governmental organization in Rangoon .
According to him, the government has been forced to unofficially push its fiscal end-of-year date back from the end of March to the end of June, in an apparent attempt at avoiding to have to settle debts with the private sector. While typically the government has circulated reminders to private businessmen to submit their receipts ahead of time in order to ensure funds are received, this year there were reportedly no such notices forwarded.
As the private sector continues to wait for their bills to be settled, complaints from businessmen anxiously awaiting payment are rapidly amounting.
In one example, the foreign aid worker reports that the biggest importer of Japanese tires informed him that the government still owes him a couple 100 million dollars from bills left unserviced.
Additionally, a large construction company states that it no loner receives remuneration for public sector projects undertaken, such as the construction of university buildings.
Throughout the country, the financial crisis within the ranks of the government is clearly visible with respect to infrastructure development projects.
Win Min, a Thailand-based analyst, suggests that the cessation of the Naypyitaw-Mandalay road construction project may be linked to the government's need to save financial assets in anticipation of the holding of country-wide elections in 2010. The uncompleted road project would then, presumably, be dumped on whatever government assumed power following elections.
A Burmese journalist in Rangoon concurs with this general trend, citing the reduction of government resources devoted to its electrical power project and the apparent fact that the government intends to soon sell off almost all state-owned property.
Yet despite the economic plight of the government itself, the financial coffers of the generals continue to amass wealth.
Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, Ltd. (UMEHL), a principle receptacle of the junta's financial interests, continues to expand in revenue received even as the government sinks ever further into bankruptcy. Hardly any of the money received through the holding company is in turn circulated into the economy for governmental expenditure.
And the amount of money finding its way to UMEHL is by no means insignificant. A single transaction involving the sale of a new Toyota Landcruiser nets UMEHL, and the generals, approximately $380,000.
