Bangkok, Dec 12 (EFE).- Myanmar, which last year overtook Afghanistan as the world’s largest opium producer, maintained its top spot this year despite reducing its cultivation area by 4 percent, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported on Tuesday.
In a report presented in Bangkok, the UNODC noted that, despite the reduction in production, Myanmar is consolidating its position as the main source of opium in the world, while in Afghanistan the cultivated area rose by 19 percent to 12,800 hectares in 2024.
«The amount of opium produced in Myanmar remains close to the highest levels we have seen since we first measured it more than 20 years ago,» said the UNODC regional representative, Masood Karimipour, in a statement.
«As conflict dynamics in the country remain intense and the global supply chains adjust to the ban in Afghanistan, we see significant risk of a further expansion over the coming years.”
Amid the conflict and the humanitarian crisis exacerbated since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, opium production in the country reached 995 tonnes in 2024, up from 1,080 tonnes the previous year, although the current figure remains more than double that of Afghanistan.
The UNODC said a slight drop in the price of opium on the international market and the difficulty of movement of people in Myanmar due to conflict may have conditioned a drop in production this year.
However, it warned that it expects high levels of production in the country to continue and that they may increase in the coming months.
Golden Triangle Eighty-eight percent of the cultivated area in Myanmar is in Shan State, where the military junta is engaged in a conflict with ethnic guerrillas in an area that is part of the so-called Golden Triangle, a drug trafficking epicenter where the border meets Thailand and Laos.
Karimipour said urgent action is needed to curb both the production of opium, used to manufacture heroin, as well as the growing trafficking of synthetic drugs and online scam centers in the region.
The food crisis and lack of resources are the main reasons why Myanmar’s farmers are dedicated to cultivating opium poppies, although most of the profits go to middlemen.
Farmers who grow opium in Myanmar do not get rich, but are simply trying to make a living and meet their families’ basic needs amidst challenging circumstances,” said Yatta Dakowah, UNODC Country Manager for Myanmar.
Myanmar was the main producer of opium in the 1990s, but production later fell to a low of 29,500 hectares in 2020, while methamphetamine trafficking soared.In Afghanistan, the Taliban took power in 2022, and production dropped by 95 percent the following year. EFE
grc/tw
