March quake to drive 2.5% drop in Myanmar GDP, says World Bank

Yangon – Myanmar’s economy is set to shrink 2.5 percent in the 2025-26 financial year, largely as a result of March’s devastating magnitude-7.7 earthquake, the World Bank said on Thursday.

The country’s economy had already been battered by four years of brutal civil war when the March 28 tremor hit, killing nearly 3,800 people and destroying swathes of homes and businesses.

A World Bank report predicted GDP will contract 2.5 percent in the financial year ending in March 2026 “mostly due to earthquake impacts”, with output US $2 billion lower than it would have been without the disaster.