Yangon: Impoverished Myanmar has sold 3,652 lots of jade, gems and pearls at a government-run sale which is expected to earn millions of dollars for the ruling junta, official media said Wednesday.

Myanmese-language newspaper The Mirror said a total of 3,508 jade lots, 47 gem lots and 97 pearl lots were sold at auction at the 44th Myanma Gems Emporium, which ran from March 8-20.

A total of 3,421 gem merchants, including 2,069 foreigners, attended the sale, the paper reported.

It said the quality of the wares and the high number of buyers could mean March’s emporium would be the most profitable yet, beating an October auction which reportedly earned the military regime nearly 125 million dollars.

However, the Myanma Gems Enterprise, which runs the sale, refused to disclose how much the auction raised, and said only that it was the “biggest ever”.

A total of 6,548 lots — the majority of which were jade — were on sale, a Myanma Gems Enterprise official said. One jade lot was worth 1.68 million euros (2.21 million dollars), but the official did not reveal if this lot was sold.

Military-ruled Myanmar used to hold the auctions twice a year to curb the flow of precious stones into the country’s enormous black market, which economists believe is at least half the size of the formal economy.
But in a bid to raise much-needed foreign currency, the junta has been holding the auctions with increasing frequency — four took place in 2006, and the March emporium was the second this year.

Some rights groups have urged international buyers to boycott the auctions because of alleged human rights abuses, including forced labour in the country’s jade and gem mines.

Myanmar, under military rule since 1962, is one of the world’s poorest nations and is subject to US and European economic sanctions because of human rights abuses and the house arrest of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.