Myanmar Country Report

Myanmar has a total land area of 676,600 square kilometres. It stretches for 936 kilometres from East to West and 2051 kilometres from North to South. Myanmar shares borders with China, Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Lao PDR. Myanmar is rich in energy recourses and its proven energy reserves comprise of 210 million barrels of oil, 20 trillion cubic feet of gas and 711 million metric tons of coal. The country is a net exporter of energy exporting substantial amounts of natural gas and coal to neighbouring countries. However, it imports around 50 percent of its total oil requirements. The population of Myanmar grew at 1.1 percent per year between 1990 and 2009 to about 50 million in 2009. Myanmar’s gross domestic product (GDP) was US$ 19.3 billion (constant 2000) in 2009 and its GDP per capita grew from US$ 0.1 thousand in 1990 to US$ 0.4 thousand in 2009. With the objectives of enhancing economic development in Myanmar, the Five-Year Short-Term interval plans have been formulated and implemented during the years 1992 to 2011. The first (1992-1995), second (1996-2000) and third plans (2001-2005) achieved average annual growth rates in GDP of 7.5 percent, 8.5 percent and 12.8 percent respectively. The last five-year plan (2006-2010) has been formulated to achieve an average annual growth rate of 12.0 172 percent in GDP. Myanmar’s total primary energy consumption was 6.1 million tons of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in 2009. By fuel, gas represented the largest share at 52.1 percent; oil was second at 36.2 percent, followed by hydro with 7.4 percent. Natural gas is mainly used for electricity generation and in industry. Myanmar has 1,650 megawatts (MW) of installed generation capacity and generated about 6.0 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2009. In 2009, thermal (coal, natural gas and oil) and hydro accounted for 28.5percent and 71.5 percent of total electricity generation respectively