The Myanmar-China trade gates in the Muse 105 mile trade zone have reopened and are operating in cooperation with respective district and township adminstrations under COVID-19 guidelines.
"We are operating as per guidelines for the COVID-19 period so as to not slow down the trade between Myanmar and China in cooperation with respective district and township level adminstrations," said Muse 105 mile trade zone Director in-charge Min Aung Aye.
The trade gates were closed, including gates to Muse as well as townships in Northern Shan State, after the State of Emergency was announced around 8am on February 1 on Myawady TV channel. One day later, at 9am on February 2, all of the gates were ordered to reopen.
Muse saw regular traffic resume around 10am while trade gates such as the Man Wun and Kyin San Kyawt gates reopened at 10.30 am, with trade resuming shortly after.
While steps were taken to ensure that trade between the two nations do not slow down, strict measures from the Chinese side on all imports coming into China such as disinfecting the trucks, changing of drivers and so on caused the amount of cargo truck traffic to drop by around half.
"As per China's regulations, our trucks have to be disinfected. The drivers have to take shifts and then queue up after that which means that the amount of vehicles going in was lowered. Man Wun Gate usually see around 400 trucks minimum but it dropped to around 150 to 200 per day. So the amount of cargo going into China was low and that was even with the opening of the Kin San Kyawt Gate. Usually, there are around 600 to 700 cargo trucks that are coming to our trade zone from Mandalay. Fruit trucks make up around half and general goods make up the other half. The fruits all go to Kyin San Kyawt while the rest go through Man Wun. Since the process got jammed, there were a line of trucks queuing up between the trade zone and the 105 mile Muse," said Min Aung Aye.
He continues to say that "From 5th to 14th January, Man Wun Gate was open 24 hours so all the trucks that got jammed got through to China already. Now, there is no need to queue up before the 105 mile if delivering cargo from Mandalay to Muse. They can enter the trade zone. However, after the checks in the zone, there is around a 3 days wait from 105 mile and Man Wun but compared to before, it queuing is shorter now. Although there is still some wait time due to COVID-19 regulations in China".
In 2019-2020 fy, the total trade value was only at 4.8 million USD at 97% capacity due to strict COVID restrictions from China. Now, within four months of the 2020-2021 fy, over 400 million USD worth of trade had occurred at 98% operation capacity.
Min Aung Aye says that the trade zone targets around over 400 million per month, at an average of 15 million per day. He says that it depended on China as to how many trucks they can recieve per day and that negotiations have been and are being carried out to facilitate the process.
He said, "Constant discussions are being held with China to increase the export capacity of Myanmar as well as heighten the income of farmers as well as enlarge the market on both sides. We will be negotiating harder to improve more than normal. We all, from departments to the public, have to work together so that trade from both sides can improve. My suggestion is that our trade department is constantly talking with China to improve their situation and respective administrators, business owners and traders need to cooperate. Only then we can have trade flowing smoothly".
There are now around 1,000 cargo trucks inside the 105 mile trade zone with around 2000 trucks and six-wheelers waiting to cross over to China as well as around 1500 cargo trucks waiting to enter Myanmar.
