Soaring prices add to Myanmar’s misery

Life in Myanmar has become much harder since the cyclone devastated the country’s rice bowl, Reuters reported on Monday. A 50-kilogram bag of rice now sells for 38,000 kyat, or about US$34.50, up from 27,000 kyat before the storm flooded more than one million acres of arable land with seawater.

The UN World Food Programme said it has given 575,000 people their first ration of rice, "but many people have not been reached, and others are now due a second round of distributions," the report said.

 " Under fire for its slow response to the disaster, a general insisted on Sunday the country’s military government had acted swiftly and it remained open to foreign aid "with no strings attached". But aid workers say there are still bureaucratic hurdles preventing people from travelling to the stricken Irrawaddy delta.

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