Khin Swe Oo dreams of becoming a teacher but instead scrapes out a living as a greengrocer in Burma’s capital, where mysteriously soaring prices have left her and most of Rangoon’s residents in a financial crunch.
“Selling fruits and vegetables as a greengrocer provides no long-term security for my life. But I have to do it to support my family. What I earn here lets me give 50,000 kyats per month to my family,” the 23-year-old said with a soft voice.
That money, less than $40, gets her family in a village in northern Burma far less than it did six weeks ago.
Since late August, diesel prices have risen 50 percent, medicine prices have increased by at least 30 percent, and even a cup of tea costs 20 percent more.
High world oil prices have helped power the price hikes, but because the notoriously secretive military government provides little meaningful economic data, politicians and economists in Rangoon say they are still trying to understand why prices have gone up so quickly.
Burma’s economy has been reeling under decades of mismanagement by the military. European Union and US sanctions that have been tightened since the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in May 2003 are also biting hard.
The crippling inflation in Burma’s already tattered economy has robbed Khin Swe Oo not only of purchasing power, but of her dream that her university education would guarantee her family’s well-being.
“I’m very tired because I have to wake up before dawn and start to work and keep selling until night. Now I have to work harder because everything costs more in the capital,” she said as she stacked tomatoes, cabbages and other fruits and vegetables on her small tray on a sidewalk in the Kyit Myin Daing evening bazaar.
Khin Swe Oo has applied twice for teaching jobs but failed to find one. Although teaching doesn’t pay much more than what she earns now, a job as a teacher would provide stability and public respect she feels she lacks.
In the meantime, she makes ends meet by living with 14 other young women in a single flat near the markets.
Prices for almost everything in the city seem to rise without stop. Newspaper prices, for example, have risen fivefold.
“We have to sell newspapers for 100 kyats [about seven cents] ... Now newspaper sales are declining. Sometimes we give it to our regular customers for 80 kyats, but then we lose on profit,” Maung Maung, 28, a hawker, said Prices have risen as the kyat has plummeted. The local currency traded on the black market on Thursday at 1,360 to one US dollar, having lost half its value since January.
A man selling medicine in the busy Mingalar market said prices would keep rising for imported goods as long as the kyat keeps weakening.
“We estimate that medicine prices have gone up about 30 percent on average, compared with August,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“We stay in business because people need their medicines,” he said, adding that most drugs were imported from neighbouring China and India.
Diesel prices have soared by 50 percent to 3,600 kyat per gallon (about four liters) forcing a corresponding increase in bus fares.
“We have to ask for a little more than before for the ride. We sympathise with the passengers, But we have no choice because the diesel and petrol prices keep rising,” Thein Zaw, 36, a taxi driver, said.
Petrol prices have jumped from 1,900 to 2,300 kyat, but diesel is in greater demand for buses, trucks, fishing boats and generators to keep the lights on during the city’s daily blackouts.
Even Rangoon’s popular teashops have been affected, as condensed milk prices have jumped by 25 percent and sugar by 40 percent.
“I have increased the price of a cup of tea cup from 100 kyats to 120, but I’m afraid of losing my customers,” one shopkeeper said.