Myanmar is an agro-based nation with a population of some 50 million. The agriculture sector, including fisheries and forestry, provides employment to over 60% of the labor force, contributing about 45 percent to GDP and 51 percent to total export earnings.
Since the introduction of the market economy in 1988, the Government has initiated wide ranging changes in mobilizing domestic resources to encourage private sector and foreign participation in developing the country's food production. However, for such initiatives to succeed a comprehensive and up-to- date information system is essential. Also, Myanmar became a member of ASEAN in 1997 and the need to share information and knowledge and exchange experiences among ASEAN member countries has placed a heavy burden on the country's information systems.
Rational policy formulation, appropriate planning, and efficient management of the food and agriculture sector require a variety of information on such aspects as size and composition of agricultural holdings, land use, acreage and volume of crop production, livestock, agricultural machinery and equipment, agricultural labor force, prices, credit, marketing, on-and off-farm income, expenditure on food, household consumption, access to agricultural services, etc.
Of these, some data on size distribution of holdings, sown and harvested area of crop, yield and production as well as area statistics in relation to cropping pattern, irrigation and flood protection are collected and disseminated by SLRD, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, but these data sets are not complete nor do they give a comprehensive and detailed picture of the structure of the agriculture of the agricultural sector. This information can only be provided through the conduct of a Census of Agriculture.
The first Census of Agriculture was conducted in 1953 covering 252 towns and 2143 village tracts in the neighborhood of these 252 urban areas. Despite many efforts to conduct further censuses, it was not until 1993 that the second Census of Agriculture took place with financial and technical assistance provided by UNDP/FAO through the project "MYA/85/004 - Agricultural Census and Strengthening of the System of Agricultural Statistics'. The 1993 Census covered 272 township out of a total of 319 in the 7 states and 7 division of Myanmar. The Census was conducted on a sample enumeration basis.
Despite the success of the 1993 Census, the data generated is now almost ten years out-of-data and there is an urgent need to conduct a third Census of Agriculture will be conducted in 2003, ten years after the last census. A decision to conduct such a census has already been agreed in principle by the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation (MOAI) and the Government expects to provide an estimated 77 million kyats for the census (Government contribution for the 1993 census was 47.9 million kyats). However, in assessing the resources required to undertake the Census, the Government has identified a critical skills gap in key technical areas such as census methodology, data processing, analysis and dissemination and is requesting FAO technical assistance, through the Technical Cooperation Programmer (TCP) to fill this gap.