BANGKOK. Aug 7: Forced labour accounts for approximately three ‘per cent of Myanmar gross domestic product, according to an economic report by the US Embassy in Yangon, exports AP

The annual report, received in Bangkok on Tuesday, paints a bleak picture of the economy. with soaring deficits, declining foreign investment, rampant military spending and rising debt and reliance on illicit drug profits.

"The state has employed growing amounts of unpaid labour, apparently worth about three per cent of GDP in fiscal year 94/95," to build infrastructure. the report said.

Myanmar has been criticised by human rights groups and international laqour organ-isationd for forcing people to work on public works. The government says citizens will-

ingly work without pay in accordance with Myanmar’s tradition.

Journalists and other outsiders who have interviewed workers dispute the government's claim, describing how people are rounded up to work for little or no pay. Inose unable to work are sometimes fined.

The United Nation's International Labour Organisation in May agreed to launch a rare grievance procedure against Myanmar a ad the US Slate Deput linent hum.in rights report this year said hundreds of thousands of Myanmar people are forced to work.

The government has reacted angrily to the report. Gen David Abel. Myanmar's minister for economic planning. said this" weekend that the report was politically motivated and malicious. He said its

findings were not creditable because many of its figures and statistics were unofficial.

A US Embassy spokesman acknowledged on condition of anonymity that some of the numbers were "educated guesses" because the government s figures were either incomplete or distorted by Myanmgr's dual exchange rates.

Abel said infrastructure development could be accelerated if Myanmar had access to loans from the World Bank, the Intel national Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, but the United States had pressured the institutions into withholding aid to Myanmar.

All three closed their lending windows to the country following the violent suppression of pro democracy demonstrations in 1988.