Myanmar stands tall among top-ten producing countries in the world because of systematic implementation of the agriculture sector. Also in various kinds of bean production, Myanmar reaches the leading role in Southeast Asia nations.
Kay Khine Swe (MRTV-3) has interviewed with U Tin Htut Oo, Director General of Department of Agriculture Planning, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.
May I know the present export products in Agriculture sector?
Myanmar used to be the world largest rice exporter and now we are also exporting rice and apart from rice, pulses (peas and beans) now become the number one exporter of Myanmar. And apart from rice and pulses, Myanmar also exports corn, sesame, and industrial crops like jute, rubber and sugar. Recently we established new sugar-mill in our country and the export of sugar is also growing. So, traditionally these are the major export commodities of Myanmar. Of course, there are other commodities like cotton or sesame but these commodities at this moment; the emphasis is more for domestic industries rather than export.

What are the potential agriculture commodities in future export?
Myanmar has a lot of potential to expand its agricultural commodities for trade in the international market because as you know Myanmar has a lot of agricultural lands still un-utilized, so we can expand the area of cultivation as well as we can increase the productivity from the present cultivated area. And the prospective agriculture commodities for future export includes more export of naturally rice, quality rice, export of sesame and other food crops like garlic, onion, potato and fresh fruits and vegetables and beverage crops like coffee and particularly tea. So, these are potential export commodities for the future.

We like to know the quality aspect of the export product?
Well, for the export of agriculture commodities, quality is very important and in terms of rice example now there’s a big demand for high quality rice like jasmine rice or basmati rice in the market. And Myanmar has a lot of such quality varieties and definitely we can promote the quality aspects. At this moment, for example when we export pulses, we have our own Myanmar’s specification, so the foreign buyers they can buy our commodities according to our specification. So, all the exports whether it’s may be the government agencies or the private sector should also be very careful about the quality aspects of agriculture commodities export.

How would you like to promote Myanmar agriculture commodities in international market?
Whenever we want to export some commodities, we have to find the right market and at this time of the age of technical information we have to make use of information technology like establishing the Website and promoting agriculture commodities. Before we can do that we have to also establish agricultural marketing and agriculture market information system in our country and this is what our ministry is doing. We are now establishing marketing information service in our country so that marketing information service will provide information to foreign buyers as well as that information will be useful for the Myanmar exporters. And we will make use of internet facilities for these buyers as well as the exporters.

Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation established Market Information Service (MIS) in May 1999 with a technical assistance and funding by FAO. Monthly MIS bulletin as an important project output have been distributed to the readers every month since January 2000.

MRTV-3 also met with U Aung Hlaing, Assistant Director of Deptment of Agricultural Planning and got the information about MIS in the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.
The project is called Agriculture Market Information Service which is provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). We started our project from 1999 May and we ended this project on March 2001. The nature of this project is a kind of technical cooperation project which is only lasted two years and now we are sustained this project under the government own fund.
The objectives of the project will be the establishing the fast stage of nation wide market information service, to make better inform decision for the farmers to sell their products, to enable farmers to better plan their future production plan and contributing to improve both the income of farmers as well as lowering the food cause of consumers thereby enhancing the food security of the country.

For international market, can you give any information on your function?
There are two different functions under this project: - collecting domestic agricultural produces from different location of the country. There are altogether 12 different locations. We are collecting the price; these are domestic price and another one is we are incorporating price information for export market. We fetched these export market prices through Internet as well as from the Embassy of Myanmar establishing in foreign countries.

We like to know the future plan for international market.
For the future, we have a plan to construct our Website to float in Internet so that foreign trader may know our products, price and availability and delivery. So, we can improve our export earning.

For agriculture marketing, up-to-date market information including the domestic price and international price is essential for farmers, millers, traders and policy makers. The market information can assist farmers in short-run to make decision where to sell and when to sell for their produces. In addition, it can provide a better basis for price negotiation with traders. In the long-run, farmers can diversify the crop and variety in line with market demand.