Myanmar, Thailand step up cooperation in drug control

Myanmar and Thailand have stepped up cooperation in drug control with Thailand agreeing to provide Myanmar with 596,698 U.S. dollars in aid for curbing narcotic drugs, an official report said Monday.

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, the two countries will conduct a one-year program 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 U.S. dollars) since 2012.

The plan involves cooperation in drug control and opium- substitute cultivation programs.

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 percent 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 (1999-2014).