DRF Country Diagnostic Note: Myanmar

Myanmar faces regular severe natural disasters. The country is exposed to floods, landslides, tropical cyclones, drought and earthquakes. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis devastated coastal communities, leading to the death of over 138,000 people. Catastrophic floods in 2015 floods and landslides are estimated to have caused production losses to the economy in 2015/16 of about 1.7 percent of the previous year’s GDP. Approximately 70 percent of the country’s population still depends on subsistence agriculture in rural areas, with their livelihoods at risk of flooding and drought.

Disasters in Myanmar drain government resources. The government does not currently have a strategy or policy in place to systematically manage the financial impact of natural disasters. Preliminary analysis estimates that the country on average experiences losses equivalent to 0.9 percent of GDP due to natural disasters every year. An analysis based on limited available historical data carried out for this note indicates that every year Myanmar faces average costs of US$9 million for just emergency response to floods alone.