Assessing Agricultural Trade Comparative Advantage of Myanmar and Its Main Competitors

Abstract

Myanmar s agricultural sector has unexploited potential to underpin its economic development. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of Myanmar s agricultural export sector and its performance against neighboring agricultural exporting countries using the UN Comtrade data. The key research question is to find whether Myanmar has the revealed comparative advantages of exporting the selected agricultural commodities when comparing with its major competitors in the target market. The findings are as follows: 1) Myanmar shows low product and market diversification in the agricultural export sector in the global market; 2) Myanmar enjoys comparative advantage in the agricultural export in the global market; 3) Myanmar reveals high level of NRCAs in black gram & pigeon peas, natural rubber, sesame seeds, rice, frozen fish, while has a low NRCAs in crustacean, dried fruits; and suffers a loss of NRCAs in bananas, fish fillet, maize, nuts, and watermelon in the certain years. Acknowledgement : First and for most, it is my great pleasure to acknowledge Dr. Kevin Chen for all the help, guidance, and sharing of knowledge on all the aspects of this work. My gratitude also goes to my colleagures for precious inspirational suggestions on this study.