Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the military council, said that 60,000 tons of patrol has arrived in Myanmar without a shortage, and that 43,000 tons more will arrive in the next few days. The oil businessmen said that they did not. They said the military council did not issue dollars to pay for the patrol ships that arrived.
In Myanmar, we use between 3.5 and 5 hundred thousand tons of fuel per month. Now, more than 100,000 tons of imported fuel oil cannot be received in a month. More than 100,000 tons of oil is more than just for 10 days or 15 day usage. The military council asked fuel oil companies not to sell as many dollars as they needed, but to sell them on a limited basis and to buy dollars from the foreign market. That is why the foreign price of 1 US dollar is 3,000 kyats, and they have to buy 50 million US dollars from the foreign market and import oil within these days, the fuel manufacturers said.
There are no more dollars in the military Council. Burmese money is being issued in droves. The dollar is up, kyat is depreciating. Inflation is high. The current fuel shortage is not caused by the oil companies, but because the military council controls everything. They control both the price and the dollar.
To solve this, the military council is trying to import fuel from Russia. But that is not as easy as it seems. I think that the shortage of fuel will inevitably happen again at the end of August.
