(HRNW) – Urban poverty is on course to triple in Myanmar, pushing nearly half the population below the poverty line next year, the United Nations said on Wednesday, as the twin impact of the pandemic and a military coup threaten progress made in the past decade.
The army seized power from the elected civilian government of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, unleashing political and economic turmoil as it sought to crush opposition and hurting efforts to fight the coronavirus.
Based on a survey of 1,200 households, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) said Myanmar was set to return to levels of deprivation not seen since 2005, before democratic reforms began.
“A slide into poverty of this scale could mean the disappearance of the middle class – a bad omen for any rapid recovery from the crisis,” Kanni Wignaraja, the director of the UNDP bureau for Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement.
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