YANGON – Myanmar and Thailand have stepped up cooperation in drug control with Thailand agreeing to provide Myanmar with 596,698 dollars in aid for curbing narcotic drugs, an official report said on Monday.
It was under a bilateral cooperation agreement signed recently between the Office of the Narcotics Control Board of Thailand and the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control of Myanmar.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
The report added that the two countries would conduct a one-year programme designed to gear up for joint drug control and transnational crackdown.
Myanmar and Thailand have been working in the two Myanmar towns of Tachilek and Monghsat on a six-year drug control plan worth Thai baht 350 million (10.7 million dollars) since 2012..
However, the plan involved cooperation in drug control and opium- substitute cultivation programmes.
According to a report of the UN Office on Drug and Crime, Myanmar could reduce poppy cultivation area from 57,800 hectares in 2013 to 57,600 hectares in 2014, while declining opium production by 25 per cent from 870 tons in 2013 to 670 tons in 2014.
Myanmar is set to continue its drug elimination plan for five more years from 2014 to 2019, aimed at picking up the momentum from the last 15-year plan (1999 to 2014). (Xinhua/NAN)