Burma’s budget revenues took a big jump in 2011, with natural gas exports earning US$ 2.94 billion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year 2011-12, up about $424.7 million dollars from 2010-11, according to local media reports.
A natural gas rig in Burma's Yetagun offshore gas field. Photo: kyspeaks.com
The statistics reveal that foreign investment in Burma’s oil and natural gas sector have now reached $13.81 billion, involving 104 projects as of the end of November 2011, according to an article in the Flower News.
The total oil and natural gas earnings account for 34.18 percent of the country’s earnings, ranking second in the country's foreign investment after electric power.
Other figures show that in 2009-10, Burma produced nearly 7 million barrels of crude oil and more than 400 billion cubic-feet (11. 32 billion cubic meters) of gas.
Burma’s energy exports account for the bulk of the government’s revenue earnings.
However, Mizzima reported earlier this year that for the current budget year, the government budget is running a deficit.
The secretary of the Public Accounts Committee of the Lower House of Parliament, Maung Toe, told Mizzima that the deficit for the central government budget for the current budget year is 2,201.45 billion kyat (about US$ 2.7).
Moreover, many state-owned industries are also in the red. The losses for the state-owned Zayawaddy and Bilin sugar mills alone was more than 500 million kyat annually, No. 2 Industrial Minister Soe Thein told Parliament on Monday. The minister didn’t make clear which fiscal years accounted for the losses at the two factories.
Burma’s fiscal year begins on April 1 and ends on March 31.
MP Phone Myint Aung of the New National Democracy Party told Mizzima: “Previously these budget figures were not disclosed to the public, and we didn’t know about these deficits. Now the Public Accounts Committee disclosed the figures showing a huge deficit, and we realize it as reality now. So we have been cheated in the past 20 years. But now it is exposed. They are now showing all of their losses and deficits in their budgets.”
In a leaked US diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. embassy in Rangoon to the State Department in Washington in May 2009, a diplomat said that Burma had a budget deficit which was caused by weakness in revenue collection, inefficiency of state-owned enterprises and government staff, uncontrolled lavish spending by the government and huge spending in unproductive sectors including defence and construction.
Lawmakers said this year that they would try to reduce the deficit by cutting infrastructure projects. The military budget is off the table when it comes to cutting the deficit, say observers.
