Sustaining Myanmar S Microfinance Sector During The Covid 19 Economic Crisis To Support Food Security Resilience And Economic Recovery

This note discusses the significant risks facing microfinance institutions (MFI) in Myanmar in the wake of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis and the implications for poverty and food insecurity of a serious negative shock to the MFI sector. The note is based on a desk review of the early policy responses in Myanmar, of best practices identified by international and local experts, and online discussions with leaders of MFIs operating in Myanmar. The objective is to make policymakers aware of the crucial role MFIs play in a wide range of economic activities in Myanmar, including food production, processing, trade, and marketing. A serious disruption to the MFI sector has the potential to: • Exacerbate food insecurity through damaging economic resilience in the short-to-medium term, • Lower agricultural output in the critical upcoming monsoon production season, and • Harm the potential for microfinance to contribute to economic recovery.

ဤစာတမ်းငယ်သည် Covid-19 ကျန်းမာေရး�ှင်စီးပွားေရးအကျပ်အတည်းေ�ကာင ့ ် ြမန်မာ�ိုင်ငံ�ှိ အေသးစား ့ ေငွေရး ေ�ကးေရးအဖွဲ�အစည်းများ ရင်ဆိုင်ေနရေသာ �ကီးမားသည့် စွန်စားရမ�များ၊ ့ အေသးစား ေငွေရးေ�ကးေရးက�ကို �ုတ်တရက် �ိုက်ခတ်လာသည့် ြပင်းထန်ေသာ ထိခိုက်မ�များ၏ ဆင်းရဲမွဲေတမ��ှင် စားနပ်ရိက�ာမလံုေလာက်မ�တို ့ ့ အေပါ် သက်ေရာက်မ�များကို ေဆွးေ�ွးတင်ြပြခင်း ြဖစ်ပါသည်။ ဤစာတမ်းငယ်ကို ြမန်မာ�ိုင်ငံ၏ ယခင်မူဝါဒဆိုင်ရာ တံုြပန်မ�များ၊ �ိုင်ငံ ့ တကာ�ှင့် ြပည်တွင်းမှ ပညာ�ှင်များမှ ေဖာ်ထုတ်ထားေသာ အေကာင်းဆံုး လုပ်ထံုးလုပ်နည်းများ�ှင် ြမန်မာ�ိုင်ငံမှ အေသးစားေငွ ့ ေရးေ�ကးေရးလုပ်ငန်းများ၏ ဦးေဆာင်သူများ�ှင် ့ အွန်လိုင်းမှေဆွးေ�ွးမ�များကို အေြခခံ ေရးသားထားပါသည်။ ဤစာတမ်းငယ်၏ ရည်ရွယ်ချက်မှာ စားသာက်ကုန်ထုတ်လုပ်ြခင်း၊ ကုန်သွယ်ြခင်း�ှင့် ေရာင်းချြခင်းများအပါအဝင် ြမန်မာ�ိုင်ငံ၏ စီးပွား ေရးလုပ်ငန်းများစွာတွင် အေသးစားေငွေရးေ�ကးေရး လုပ်ငန်းများ၏ အေရးပါမ�ကို မူဝါဒချမှတ်သူများ သတိထားမိေစရန် ြဖစ်ပါသည်။ အေသးစား ေငွေရးေ�ကးေရးလုပ်ငန်းအဖွဲ�အစည်း များ �ပိုကွဲပျက်ဆီးမ�သည်- • စီးပွားေရး �ကံ့�ကံ့ခံ�ိုင်ရည်�ှိမ�ကို ထိခိုက်ြခင်းအားြဖင် ကာလတို ့ -ကာလလတ်တွင် စားနပ်ရိက�ာ ဖူလံုမ�ကို ပိုမိုဆိုးဝါးေစြခင်း • အေရး�ကီးေသာ လာမည့်မိုးရာသီ စိုက်ပျိုးထုတ်လုပ်ချိန်တွင် စိုက်ပျိုးေရးထုတ်ကုန်များ ေလျာနည်း ့ ေစြခင်း၊ • စီးပွားေရးြပန်လည်ထူ ေထာင်ရန် အေသးစားေငွေရးေ�ကးေရးလုပ်ငန်းများမှ အေထာက်အကူေပး�ိုင် သည့် အလားအလာကို ထိခိုက်ေစြခင်းများ ြဖစ်ေစ�ိုင်ပါသည်။

This Working Paper takes comprehensive stock of the impacts of the first two waves of COVID-19 (in Q2 and Q4 2020) on the microfinance sector in Myanmar. We discuss potential impact pathways, review policy responses to the crisis, and present new quantitative analysis based on a set of surveys with respondents throughout the agricultural value chain. Additionally, we briefly review impacts since the military takeover on February 1, 2021. Overall, various disruptions to the microfinance sector, particularly during peak periods of COVID-19, significantly reduced overall lending from April 2020, onward. These disruptions, along with disruptions to external financing, led to greater informal borrowing, likely greater indebtedness, and lower food security. However, policy responses and financing accommodations to microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Q2 and Q3 2020 cushioned the sector against widespread insolvency. The events since the military takeover are creating new challenges, exacerbating the aforementioned impacts, and raising new risks of MFI insolvency and broader crises around food security, indebtedness, and poverty. Considering these findings, stakeholder recommendations underscore the importance of easing the movement of international and domestic goods. Efforts should be focused on meeting the MFIs’ need for loanable funds through mechanisms such as exchange rate hedging, credit guarantees, and loan enhancement, while continuing to encourage flexibility around existing financing. When the time comes for a full recovery, there should be a focus on facilitating additional financial injections so that MFIs can more effectively restart lending operations.

Between April and October 2020, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Michigan State University (MSU), with support from the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) and the Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT), have undertaken analyses of secondary data combined with regular telephone surveys of actors at all stages of Myanmar’s agri-food system in order to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the system. These analyses show that the volume of agribusiness has slowed considerably in Myanmar since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. There is lower demand from farmers for agricultural inputs and mechanization services and lower volumes of produce traded, especially exports to neighboring countries whose borders are closed. All actors in the agri-food system are facing liquidity constraints and experiencing increased difficulties in both borrowing and recovering loans.

The recent history of rural economic transformation in Myanmar and the effects of COVID-19 and the military coup in February 2021 provide important lessons for the design and implementation of plans to help the country recover from these scourges. The impoverishment of farming communities in Myanmar during decades of socialist military rule, beginning in the 1960s until the turn of the century, led to an outflux of migrants to neighboring countries. As the country opened up to foreign investment through economic reforms initiated in 2011, rural wages surged and farm mechanization services expanded rapidly. Together with increased remittance flows from migrants, higher rural household incomes drove growth in a wide range of non-farm service enterprises. Nevertheless, agricultural growth was low and most crop subsectors stagnated due to underlying and unresolved structural constraints such as poor infrastructure and inequality in land access. As in many other countries in Asia, border closures and lockdowns instituted to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 resulted in widespread employment and income losses. The Myanmar government pro-actively sought to mitigate the impacts through expanded credit to farmers and businesses. By the end of 2020, Myanmar was beginning to recover from the economic stresses of COVID-19. However, the February 2021 military coup resulted in a far more severe economic downturn than COVID-19 due to the collapse of the financial system, the massive resignations by public sector employees, and the prolonged movement restrictions. Coup-induced state failure greatly magnified the health and economic consequences of COVID-19 in terms of poverty, food insecurity, and stalled economic transformation. This paper uses a combination of macro, meso, and micro-level analyses to measure the impacts of COVID-19 and state failure on rural economic transformation through the lens of the agri-food system, and to draw lessons for policies to support broad-based and resilient economic recovery.

This study assesses the welfare impacts of COVID-19 on households in Myanmar by combining recent high-frequency telephone survey evidence for two specific rural and urban geographies with national-level survey-based simulations designed to assess ex-ante impacts on poverty with differing amounts of targeted cash transfers. The first source of evidence – the COVID-19 Rural and Urban Food Security Survey (C19- RUFSS) – consists of four rounds of monthly data collected from a sample of over 2,000 households, all with young children or pregnant mothers, divided evenly between urban and peri-urban Yangon and the rural Dry Zone. This survey sheds light on household incomes prior to COVID-19 (January 2020), incomes and food security status soon after the first COVID-19 wave (June 2020), the gradual economic recovery thereafter (July and August 2020), and the start of the second COVID-19 wave in September and October 2020. This survey gives timely and high-quality evidence on the recent welfare impacts of COVID-19 for two important geographies and for households that are nutritionally highly vulnerable to shocks due to the presence of very young children or pregnant mothers. However, the relatively narrow geographic and demographic focus of this telephone survey and the need for forecasting the poverty impacts of COVID-19 into 2021 prompt us to explore simulationbased evidence derived by applying parameter shocks to household models developed from nationally representative household survey data collected prior to COVID-19, the 2015 Myanmar Poverty and Living Conditions Survey (MPLCS). By realistically simulating the kinds of disruptions imposed on Myanmar’s economy by both international forces, e.g., lower agricultural exports and workers’ remittances, and domestic COVID-19 prevention measures. e.g., stay-at-home orders and temporary business closures, we not only can predict the impacts of COVID-19 on household poverty at the rural, urban, and national levels, but also can assess the further benefits to household welfare of social protection in the form of monthly household cash transfers of different magnitudes. Combined, these two sources of evidence yield insights on both the on-the-ground impacts of COVID-19 in recent months and the potential poverty reduction impacts of social protection measures in the coming year. We conclude the study with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.

National poverty rates in Myanmar have risen dramatically due to economic disruption following the February 1, 2021 military take-over of government. Depending on assumptions about the scale of the economic impacts, household poverty rates are predicted to have risen to between 40 and 50 percent in 2021, compared to 32 percent in 2015 and just under 25 percent in 2017. Between 849,000 and 1.87 million new households are thus living in poverty in 2021 in addition to the estimated 2.86 million households already in poverty in 2015. The poverty impacts of these disruptions are significant not only in the sharp increases in the total number of households in poverty, but also in the substantial deepening of poverty for households that were already poor. By the end of the current financial year, the average poverty gap (expenditure shortfall) is predicted to have increased from 26 percent in 2015 to between 34 and 40 percent for individuals living in poor households.

The recent sudden imposition of a stringent 21-day lockdown in India in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the food security of many vulnerable Indians. These impacts highlight the many challenges that this kind of anti-COVID intervention can pose in other settings where the labor force is mostly informally employed with poor job security and low wages, and where the agri-food systems is similarly informal with widespread use of open-air markets. Myanmar is such a setting. India’s chastening experience with food security during its lockdown suggests the following actions would be imperative for maintaining food security in Myanmar: • Allow the free movement of all goods. A stable and reliable agri-food system requires free movements of a wide range of food products (including micronutrient-rich fruits, vegetables and animal-sourced foods) as well as essential non-food goods. • Monitor food markets and agricultural value chains as closely as possible to address problems when they do arise. • Reduce risk of COVID-19 contagion by improving hygiene in Myanmar’s food markets. • Issue clear directives to police, military, and local authorities not to impede the movement of goods. The Government of Myanmar should learn from the mistakes made in India and other developing countries. We must recognize that basic food and nutrition security must be maintained at all times through this complex health and socioeconomic crisis.