Illegal goods worth K547.04 million seized in nationwide crackdown in two days

Under the supervision of the Illegal Trade Eradication Steering Committee, legal action continues to be taken against illicit trade across the country.
On 14 November, the combined teams impounded consumer goods worth K54.39 million without official documents from nine containers at the Asia World Port Terminal container checkpoint, consumers goods worth K23.88 million from a passenger at the Yangon International Airport, and a Hino truck worth K30 million carrying consumer goods and industrial materials valued at K12.8 million without official documents at the dry port in Ywathagyi. The action was conducted under the Customs procedures.
Similarly, on 15 November, the combined teams from Bago Region seized a Toyota Hiace and Kia Bango worth K40 million carrying industrial materials and foodstuffs worth K6.5 million at Nyaungkhashay X-ray check point, and a Dong Feng tractor worth K70 million carrying auto parts valued at K9.3 million without official documents near Shwe Thanlwin Tollgate in Phayagyi. In Toungoo District, the teams seized illegal timber weighing 1.303 tonnes worth K886,176. The action was taken under the Forest Law and Customs procedures.
Similarly, the combined teams from Sagaing Region seized 35 barrels of petrol and 50 barrels of diesel (estimated worth K19.85 million) at the Yadanabon bridge combined checkpoint in Sagaing Township on 16 November. The action was conducted under the Petroleum and Petroleum Products Law.
On 16 November, a team led by the Customs Department conducted inspections at Yangon International Airport. Industrial materials worth an estimated K2.61 million were seized from a passenger’s luggage, and legal proceedings are underway in accordance with customs regulations.
On 17 November, combined teams under the management of the Bago Region Illegal Trade Eradication Task Force inspected the Nawade Bridge toll gate in Padaung Township. A Nissan diesel truck valued at K250 million was seized, carrying 3,200 gallons of illegal crude oil worth K24.18 million. Legal action was taken under the Petroleum and Petroleum Products Law.
Additionally, 1.612 tonnes of illegal teak and 8.709 tonnes of hardwood, with an estimated value of K2.62 million, were confiscated in Bago, Nyaunglebin, and Pyay Districts.
From 14 to 17 November, a total of 19 cases were reported, with illegal goods worth K547.047 million confiscated, according to the Illegal Trade Eradication Steering Committee. — MNA/TKO

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18/11/2024 8:26am(MMT)
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Debt-saddled Laos struggles to tame rampant inflation
Published Sun, Nov 17, 2024 · 081 PM

Suffocating under a mountain of debt to China, communist Laos is struggling to tame rampant inflation, with food prices rising so sharply that a growing number of households are resorting to foraging.

At a market in Vientiane, traders told AFP that they have never known business to be so slow, as families have seen the value of their money collapse since Covid-19.

While the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent prices around the world spiralling, Laos has found itself incapable of putting the brakes on inflation.
Prices rocketed 23 per cent in 2022 and 31 per cent last year, while they are on course for 25 per cent this year, according to the Asian Development Bank (AD.

Families in particular have been hit hard as the cost of basic staples such as rice, sugar, oil and chicken doubled last year. A growing number of households are so desperate for food that they are now having to forage to supplement their diets, according to a World Bank household survey earlier this year.

At Vientiane’s morning market, a gold trader said that where customers used to come to buy necklaces, rings and earrings for special occasions, now all anyone wants is to sell their valuables to raise cash.
“I sometimes sit all day and nobody buys my gold,” the 45-year-old told AFP last month. “My shop used to be busy but now nobody buys gold – they all come to sell it to get money.” After 15 years running his shop, the trader said he fears for the future of his business.

Despite three decades of consistent economic growth, Laos remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, with limited transport infrastructure and a low-skilled workforce mostly employed in agriculture.

Life expectancy is just 69 years and the ADB says that nearly one in three children under five is stunted because of malnutrition – one of the highest rates globally.

In recent years, the government has borrowed billions of dollars from neighbour China to fund a US$6-billion high-speed railway and a series of major hydropower dams – aiming to become the “battery” of South-east Asia.

The World Bank warned in a report recently that public debt – over US$13 billion, or 108 per cent of GDP – was “unsustainable”.

Servicing the debt is fuelling inflation by driving down the value of the kip, which lost half its value against the US dollar in 2022, and nearly a fifth in the first nine months of 2024.

“Given Laos’ heavy reliance on imports, the kip’s depreciation has driven up domestic consumer prices and inflation, squeezing domestic demand and slowing economic recovery,” said Poh Lynn Ng, an economist with the Asean+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (Amro). Interest payments totalling US$1.7 billion are due in 2024 and an average of US$1.3 billion for the next three years, further eroding Laos’ foreign exchange reserves.

The Bank of Lao PDR has raised interest rates and in August, the government launched a plan aiming to bring inflation below 20 per cent by December. But Vivat Kittiphongkosol of the Joint Development Bank (JD Laos said the government had been “too slow” to react as problems unfolded.

“To kill this economic problem, you cannot utilise a single transaction and expect it to solve everything. You need to do a lot of things,” he told AFP.

The World Bank says the government has brought some stability to its finances, but mainly through debt deferrals and limiting spending on health, education and welfare.

Alex Kremer, the World Bank country manager for Laos, warned that these austerity measures would have damaging long-term consequences.

“Continued underinvestment in human capital will damage the country’s long-term productivity and its future ability to compete in regional markets,” he said.

Instead, the World Bank has urged the government to boost revenue by cutting tax breaks – and also to try to restructure its debt.

Though small, Laos is too important to Beijing to be allowed to fail, JDB’s Vivat said, both politically and as a key leg in the Belt and Road Initiative route that aims to connect south-west China ultimately to Singapore.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman told AFP that Beijing was doing “all it can to help Laos ease its debt burden”.

But Laotians can expect more pain in the short term, with the ADB predicting inflation will stay above 20 per cent until the end of next year at least. AFP

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နိုဝင်ဘာ ၁၈

အိန္ဒိယ သံအမတ်ကြီး အဘ်ဟေး သာကာ (Abhay Thakur)သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှ လုပ်ငန်းရှင်များနှင့် ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ်၊ နိုဝင်ဘာ ၁၇ ရက်က တွေ့ဆုံ၍ စိုက်ပျိုးရေးထွက်ကုန်များ ပူးပေါင်းဆောင်ရွက်ရေး ဆွေးနွေးခဲ့ကြောင်း အိန္ဒိယ သံရုံးမှ ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သည်။

သံအမတ်ကြီး အဘ်ဟေးသာကာသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ပဲ၊ ပြောင်း၊ နှမ်း ကုန်သည်များအသင်း (MPBMSMA) ၊ မြန်မာကုန်သည်များနှင့် စက်မှုလက်မှုလုပ်ငန်းရှင်များအသင်း (UMFCCI) ၊ Overseas Agro Traders Association (OATA) တို့၏ ဥက္ကဋ္ဌများ၊ အဖွဲ့ဝင်များနှင့် တွေ့ဆုံခဲ့သည်ဟု သံရုံး၏ ထုတ်ပြန်ချက်မှာ ဖော်ပြထားသည်။

ထို့နောက် စိုက်ပျိုးရေး ထွက်ကုန်များဆိုင်ရာ ပူးပေါင်းဆောင်ရွက်မှုသည် မိမိတို့၏ ဆက်ဆံရေးအတွက် အဓိကကျသည့် အခန်းကဏ္ဍဖြစ်သည်ဟုလည်း အိန္ဒိယသံရုံးက ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သည်။

အိန္ဒိယသည် မြန်မာနှင့်ပဲတန်ချိန် ၅ သိန်း တင်ပို့နိုင်ရေး MoU ထိုးရန်လည်း ပြင်ဆင်နေကြောင်း သိရသည်။


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