Asia | General chaos

An economically illiterate junta is running Myanmar into the ground

Last year’s coup has put the country’s economy in a tailspin

People queue to buy cheap vegetable oil, in Yangon on August 18, 2022. - Dozens queued under monsoon drizzle for subsidised cooking oil in Myanmar's commercial hub Yangon, one of the many commodities that have become scarce as economic misery strikes the city, following the last coup and has been further rattled by the junta's attempts to seize scarce foreign exchange and erratic rules governing businesses and imports. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
|Chiang Mai, Thailand

Queues snake away from open-backed trucks that sell cooking oil on the streets of Yangon. Since July people in Myanmar’s commercial capital have stood for hours in the tropical heat and rain to buy discounted oil from wholesalers. At 3,000 kyats ($0.90) a kilo it costs about half what it would on the open market. That still makes oil almost 50% dearer than it was last year, before a military coup put Myanmar’s economy into a tailspin.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “General chaos”

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