Fearful tourists desert Burma after protests – and the economy withers

timesonline.co.uk

“There were many tourists in the beginning of September but then, after this Saffron Revolution, very few,” says Le Le (a pseudonym is used to protect her identity).

For Le Le Thaung and people like her across the Burmese city of Mandalay the events of the past few weeks have been among the most uplifting – and the most depressing – of their lives.

For ten days she watched as Buddhist monks took to the streets to demand freedom from the military dictatorship. Like the rest of the world she shivered as the demonstrations were quelled with smoke bombs and gunfire. But after the political disappointment came economic disaster: the foreign visitors who keep afloat Le Le’s hotel and restaurant business simply disappeared.

“There were many tourists in the beginning of September but then, after this Saffron Revolution, very few,” says Le Le (a pseudonym is used to protect her identity). “October to November is our peak season, but all the reservations have been cancelled. It’s not just hotels and restaurants which are affected, but all the tourist businesses.”

Apart from coping with the brutal junta under which they have lived for 45 years, Burmese have faced two economic blows in two months. In August enormous price rises were caused by the sudden removal of government subsidies on fuel, which triggered small demonstrations and then mass marches. But the protests themselves have had their own economic effects, not least of which is to have scared away the foreign tourist trade.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the revered Burmese democracy leader, has consistently asked that foreign tourists boycott the country. As a consequence Burma has never seen the millions of visitors who holiday in neighbouring Thailand and Malaysia. But last year 263,500 tourists ignored the boycott and visited Burma. By the end of August the total was already 190,000, suggesting that a record year was in the offing. Then came the demonstrations and the crackdown. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, like those of other nations, rates Burma as a country that should be visited only if essential. And in Mandalay – the former royal capital, until it was conquered by the British in 1885 – the effects are visible on the streets.

The lone foreigner who walks along the moat of King Thibaw’s former palace finds himself besieged by desperate drivers of taxis and the pedal-propelled trishaws, competing with one another to offer ever lower prices. In a luxury hotel the staff outnumber the 23 guests at a time of year when it would expect 200. And Le Le’s hotel and restaurant is empty. She has laid off 30 of her 50 staff; those that remain have had their 60,000 kyat (£22) monthly pay cut by half.

Less well known than the junta’s brutality is its incompetence as an economic manager. Burma is rich in gems, timber and natural gas, yet it remains the poorest large country in South East Asia. Average per capita income is £150 a year, well below the poverty of Cambodia or Laos. Unemployment is officially 10 per cent but probably closer to 30 per cent, and inflation runs at about 50 per cent. The country exports more energy than it consumes but because of its inefficient refineries home-drilled oil cannot be used in most buses, cars and power stations. Fuel must be imported and, in August, with global prices rising, the Government decided that it could no longer subsidise the cost. Diesel doubled in price, and with it the cost of everything transported by road, and bus and car travel itself.

The question for the Government is whether the intensifying hardship will quell the will to protest or invigorate it all the more.

One rule for them . . .

— Burma is ranked the world’s fourth-most corrupt country

— The official value of exports is £1.7bn, rated 110th globally

— Those close to the junta can buy heavily subsidised goods, which are then sold – or smuggled abroad – for huge profit, creating a black market equal in size to its legitimate counterpart

— A private soldier earns 30,000 kyat a month, officially £2,300 but in reality only enough to buy one and a half bags of rice