Myanmar at a Glance

Capital: Rangoon
Area: 676.6 thousand sq. km
Population: 45.6 million ( 27.7% urban)
Adult literacy: 89% male, and 80.6% female
Per capita: Not known
Languages: Burmese and other minority languages
Religion: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Animism
Life expectancy: 60 years

Despite the moderate success of the Myanmar economic reforms of the 1980s, the absence of affordable capital in rural areas is an enormous financial constraint for the nearly 80 percent of the population who live at a subsistence level and rely on small and microenterprise activities for supplemental sources of income and employment. Small farmers and the poor have to borrow from the local moneylenders at very high interest rates. The Government-owned Myanmar Agriculture and Rural Development Bank gives seasonal agriculture loans to farmers who own land but there is no institution in the country that offers financial services to the rural poor without collateral. To address this growing need and to help Myanmar's rural poor out of absolute poverty, Pact, in collaboration with UNDP/UNOPS, introduced credit, savings, small and microenterprise development, and primary health care services to community-based groups in the three townships of the Dry Zone, Chaung U, Magway and Kyaukpadaung.