Some economic improvement has ensued, but major obstacles to economic reform persist. These include disproportionately large military spending, extensive overt and covert state involvement in economic activity, excessive state monopolization of leading exports, a bloated bureaucracy prone to arbitrary and opaque governance, and poor human and physical infrastructure. Money laundering in Burma is a growing problem, and the laundering of drug profits is thought by some analysts to have a widespread impact on the Burmese economy. The Government restricts worker rights and uses forced labor on a widespread basis. In the past year, the military has begun using soldiers instead of civilians at certain infrastructure projects, following the issuance of directives in 1995 to end the practice of forced civilian labor.
Child labor continues to be a serious problem.
As a largely underdeveloped country, Burma does not have some of the extensive environmental problems affecting air and water quality that plague many of its rapidly industrializing neighbors. However, with a rapid population growth rate, the country faces increasing pressure on environmental quality. Burma possesses the largest tracts of remaining tropical forest in southeast Asia, though aggressive international logging companies are eyeing these forests just as they are eyeing those in other Mekong countries. Because of the severe restrictions on Embassy travel to outlying parts of Burma, it is difficult to document the overall extent of the problem. Embassy officials have visited the showcase Bago Yoma Forest 150 miles north of Rangoon.