No additional licenses for beer and cigarette factories: MIC

On cigarette manufacturing, MIC secretary Aung Naing Oo said that the permission is being halted because the Health Ministry has stopped issuing permissions. Some cigarette factories operate with the permission of the MIC, while others operate under the jurisdiction of the Health Ministry.

On beer manufacturing, Carlsberg and Heineken were the last to get the permission.

“In the local market, beer and cigarettes are in demand. If we don’t supply the consumers’ demand, these items will be illegally imported. We do not want that to happen, so we made decisions to balance supply and demand. Soon, Carlsberg and Heineken beers will be produced locally. Their factories are being built. The manufacturers will also review the market when they launch to assess the illegal import rate in the local market. We do not know if the MIC policy will be amended or not. This is why we are pausing on issuing licenses for beer and cigarette manufacturing,” said Aung Naing Oo.

Data shows that beer, liquor and cigarettes are currently being imported illegally. 

Myanmar lacks nationwide data on alcohol consumption. However, according a 2008 rapid assessment by the World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health in Yangon, Taunggyi and Mawlamyine 19-24 per cent of drinkers surveyed were “problem users”.

The warnings come as global beer and liquor manufacturers expand their presence in what one international analyst described as “one of the last remaining virgin markets for growth”. Jeremy Cunnington, an alcoholic-drinks analyst at Euromonitor, was also quoted in local media as saying that for global manufacturers there were “very few opportunities to expand and grow” and that “Myanmar is one of those opportunities”.

Public health experts in Myanmar, however, say the lack of enforced regulations on advertising, distribution and sale of alcohol can leave youths vulnerable to the industrial drive now underway to increase sales of beer and alcohol in the country.

In recent years, the alcohol consumption rate and the number of female drinkers have risen. Market analysts claim that these rates will continue to rise.

Win Aung Myint, a mental health specialist at Yangon Mental Hospital, said recently that there is a rise in the number patients in their 20s who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. The warning was made at seminar in Nay Pyi Taw during which public health experts and officials sought to draft new guidelines and strategies to control the distribution, advertising and consumption of alcohol.

"Now, even teenagers have started drinking [alcohol] and some will become addicts in their 20s,” the doctor said.

As much as 70 per cent of the alcohol consumed by youths was illegally distilled.