Parts of Shan state in the east, which produces around 80 per cent of the crop, have been embroiled in fighting this year, which the Myanmar Opium Survey 2024 says has pushed many poppy farmers to abandon their fields.
Limitations on movement to remote areas and an extreme monsoon season were cited as other possible factors for the decrease.
The report also found that oversupply in the regional heroin market and shifts in the drug’s global supply chain may have reduced demand for opiate exports and led to price drops.
But the UNODC said this year’s harvest still represents Myanmar’s second largest in the last two decades and a key source of its income.
Myanmar’s economy has tanked since the coup, with the World Bank this week forecasting a 1 per cent contraction in the fiscal year ending March 2025.
Masood Karimpour, the UNODC’s Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said there was a high risk of further expansion as supply chains adjust and cultivation methods improve.
Myanmar authorities were facing “severe challenges” in curbing poppy cultivation, the junta’s home affairs minister told state media in June.
AFP have contacted the junta for comment about the UN’s latest findings.
The coup sparked social and economic turmoil and armed conflict across the country and has displaced more than three million people, according to the UN.
