The weakness of agricultural credit in Myanmar (2)

This post contains the third column of an article on the challenges of weak credit for farmers in Myanmar. It comes from page 29 of 7 Day News, April 28, 2011. The rest of the article will be translated in a subsequent post.

Vocabulary:

မိုးခေါင် ။ to suffer from drought
ရင့် ။ mature
မှည့် ။ ripe
နစ် ။ to sink, drown
လေလွင့် ။ go to waste
ဆုံးရှုံး ။ lose (through accident, theft, etc)
ယင်း ။ that
ပေါ်ဆန်းဘေးကျား ။ a type of rice (?)
တင်း ။ unit of measure for grain (i.e. a basket, bushel)
ရပ်တည် ။ to exist
တိုင်ပင် ။ to consult, ask for advice
ပမာဏ ။ magnitude, extent
မတည် ။ capitalize, provide capital for a business venture
အထူးပြု ။ qualify​, modify, specialize in, major in

Translation:

At the onset of the rainy season there was a drought due to El Niño weather. As a consequence of [farmers] experiencing La Niña weather during the time when the paddy was ripe, [they] have experienced the drowning and loss [of their paddy crops]. As a result, the sprouting of the main Pau-san-bay-kya paddy crop has waned in the region. There has been a reduction of 50 to 40 bushels [of paddy] harvested annually from one acre. Due to that, farmers who have taken financial loans have come a difficult existence, said U Htun Htun.

After Cyclone Nargis, farmers consulted with the government and private sector leaders regarding the difficulties they faced and [these people] lent money to the farmers. Given the interest rate and the extent of financial loans (2 kyat interest), although there is work, if [this area] is compared with the whole country, then the extent of acres of paddy field that can produce [crops] is still low, said an officer from a Myanmar paddy cultivation association.

"All of the farmers are still unable to pay for a small amount of financial investment capital. In the region, [farmers] are only able to pay about 5 percent," said Director U On Han from a company based in Pya-pon District that specialises in Greenland Rice.