By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific

  This report presents the results of the twenty-second Myanmar opium survey, covering the 2023/2024 opium growing and harvesting season. The last three surveys in Myanmar covering the 2020/2021, 2021/2022, and the 2022/2023 seasons showed an increase at the national level in both areas under opium poppy cultivation and opium production. The 2023 survey reported an 18% increase in the area under cultivation to an estimated 47,100 hectares. For the first time in three years the 2024 survey shows a modest decline in the area under cultivation by 4% to 45,200 hectares, indicating a possible stabilization at recent high levels. Three consecutive years of expanding cultivation followed by a year of limited decline could indicate some degree of saturation in regional heroin markets supplied by Myanmar. Declining prices of fresh opium in Myanmar and declining purity adjusted prices of heroin in regional markets could have dissuaded a further increase of production in Myanmar in 2024. However, information from the field suggests that the stagnation in productivity could also be related to the ongoing internal conflict. While instability and conflict, and their impact on the rule of law have traditionally been seen as a driver of illicit crop cultivation, the expansion of the conflict and shifts in the territorial control of armed actors, especially in the growing areas of Shan and Kachin, have limited the mobility of rural population, and likely prevented farmers from accessing cultivation areas further away from their villages. The dynamics of internal conflict might also explain the uneven development across Myanmar’s states in regions, with some areas showing declines in cultivation and others continued growth. In October 2024, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that there were some 3 million people internally displaced across the country, with Shan and Kachin in particular seeing escalating tensions and clashes in late 2023 and early 2024. The 2024 survey shows decreases in illicit opium cultivation in half of the geographic areas observed, including South Shan which traditionally experienced the most extensive opium cultivation. Eastern Shan, Chin, and Kayah had modest increases between survey years. Overall, cultivation in Shan State, which continues to be the centre of opium production in Myanmar at 88% of total cultivation area, decreased by 4% to 39,700 ha, with decreases in South and North Shan (-9% and -4% respectively) while East Shan increased by 10%. Cultivation in Kachin saw a moderate decrease of 10%, a change from past trends when above-average increases were observed. Estimates for Chin and Kayah, where the overall area remained small in comparison to other areas, showed an 18% and 8% increase, respectively. Overall potential opium production decreased at greater rates than cultivation due to a decline in opium yield. In 2024, average yield declined by 4% from 22.9 kg per hectare to 22kg per hectare, resulting in an estimated opium production of 995 (700-1,580) metric tons, or 8% less than in 2023. Nevertheless, both yield and production remain at high levels across the last decade. The decrease in cultivation and production coincided with a decrease in farmgate prices of both fresh and dry opium in USD terms, by 4% and 8%, respectively. In 2024, fresh opium traded at just over US$300 per kilogram, down from US$317 the year before, although it remained high compared to the last low point in 2021 when it stood at US$131 per kilogram. In combination with lower production, nationally farmers earned slightly less income than the previous year, between US$230 – US$518 million in 2024 (US$271 - US$613 million in 2023). The farmgate value only represents a small share of the overall opiate economy, with heroin manufacture and export making up a larger share. Wholesale prices of heroin in the region declined even more, contributing to a much larger decrease in the value of the total national opiate economy of about 40%, now ranging between US$589 million and US$1.57 billion, representing between 0.9 – 2.4% of Myanmar’s 2023 GDP  

Thailand: UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific 2024. 88p.