Nearly all garment factories in Myanmar have been forced to shut down due to power outages and exorbitant fuel prices, the garment factory owners told Than Lwin Times.

More than a year after the military coup, power outages have forced garment factories to rely mainly on fuel, and rising general costs have made it difficult for businesses to keep running.

Nowadays, the garment industry spends hundreds of thousands of kyats a day on fuel, depending on the size of the business.

A garment factory owner said that if the military council does not provide electricity regularly until the end of June, almost all garment factories will shut down.

“It is not possible to use generators because the price of fuel oil is almost Ks 3,000 per liter. If there is no regular electricity supply, some factories will have to close down in early July,” a garment factory owner said.

The coup junta has promised to provide electricity to the garment industry in Yangon Region from 9 am to 5 pm daily from June, but so far nothing has been done.

A factory manager says the garment industry, which faces many difficulties in running a business, is even struggling to pay staff salaries due to fiscal imbalance.

There are thousands of garment factories in Myanmar, with more than 700,000 workers dependent on the garment industry.

But more than 200,000 garment workers lost their jobs more than a year after the military takeover, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).