More than 50 percent of the whole country will have access to electricity by December this year, and efforts are being made to further develop power supply sector as a budget of over K600 billion has been approved for the current 2019-2020 fiscal year, said chief engineer Thura Aung Bo from the Rural Electrification Programme. 

In Myanmar, 3.7 million households (37 percent) had access to electricity in 2015-2016 while the number will have reached 5.448 million (50.09 percent) by December 2019. 

"The government is improving foreign loans, regional government budgets and Union budgets. From 2016-2017 FY to date under the incumbent government, the budget amount has hit K917.252 billion. It is estimated to spend K662.259 billion in the current financial year. This is why we have briefed on government investment in rural electrification in addition to supply electricity to 34 percent of the country," Thura Aung Bo said. 

National electrification project-1 (NEP-1) with a loan of US$310 million targets 5,080 villages in a radius of two miles and NEP-2 4,000 villages in a radius of two to five miles and 700 villages for improved electrification rate totalling 9,780 villages. 

NEP-1 will be completed by September 2020 and NEP-2 by September 2021. 

The Ministry of Energy and Electricity is spending State budgets as well as foreign loans for national electrification project. The loan amount has reached US$621.001 million from World Bank, JICA, ADB, FFW (Germany) and other organizations. 

Coordination is also being sought from JICA, ADB and NEDA to further loan US$628.104 million.