The economy is in tatters after decades of misrule by military governments, while food prices are soaring, making life even more wretched in one of the poorest countries in the world even before it was battered by a cyclone at the weekend.

“Working in another country is better than here. After I pay back the debt I will owe for going to Singapore, I can save money for my family,” he said.

Aung Aung is one of the luckier ones — the 32-year-old drives a taxi in the main city Yangon and earns about 5,000 kyats (4.50 dollars) a day, more than the average daily wage of about 1.50 dollars.

But this is still barely enough to provide for his wife and child.

“What do I do if I’m sick? I have no savings. The owner of the taxi will just give the car to another driver,” he told AFP.

“I also worry for my daughter’s future. She is just six months old. As she grows up, our expenses will increase. That’s why I decided to leave here, even though I don’t want to be away from my little daughter,” he said.

The economy is a touchy subject for the secretive junta, especially as the country prepares for Saturday’s referendum on a new constitution.

The military government said the vote would go ahead, despite the cyclone which killed at least 351 people, left tens of thousands homeless and crippled the economic hub Yangon.

A surprise rise in fuel prices last August sparked anti-junta protests, which eventually drew up to 100,000 people on to the streets in September.

A government crackdown left at least 31 people dead, the UN has said, prompting tougher Western sanctions on the military regime.

Myanmar has been under sanctions for the past decade, but the latest measures blocked access to US financial institutions and made it more difficult to export its highly desired teak and precious stones.

Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar’s economy at Australia’s Macquarie University, said that while new sanctions mostly affected the top leadership, the economy in general had suffered since the protests.

He told AFP in Bangkok that rice prices had gone up by about 50 percent in a year in impoverished Myanmar, where any increase has a huge impact.

“Burma’s macro-economy continues to founder,” Turnell said by email, referring to Myanmar by its former name.

“Tourism has been greatly impacted by the events of last year, whilst the slowing of the global economy has already had an impact on the inflows of investment from the region.”

The International Monetary Fund estimated Myanmar’s per capita gross domestic product at 235 dollars in 2007, among the lowest in the world, while inflation was 34 percent.

Myanmar is a resource-rich country, but successive military governments which have ruled since 1962 have run the economy into disrepair.

And although foreign trade volume is rising as neighbouring Thailand, India and China scramble to get their hands on Myanmar’s huge gas reserves, this money is not trickling down to the people.

Myanmar earned 2.7 billion dollars from gas exports in 2007, an 80 percent increase from the previous year, a newspaper said in April.

But hundreds of people still queue up at the passport offices every day in the hope of finding work abroad, while others enter neighbouring countries illegally.

“People in rural areas find it very difficult to get a job, so many people cross the Thai border,” said one garment factory manager in Yangon. “They don’t need a passport or anything.”

The dangers were underscored in April when 54 illegal migrants from Myanmar suffocated to death in Thailand after being packed in a container truck with a broken ventilation system.

Analysts said the new constitution did not look like it would fix Myanmar’s chronic economic problems.

Zarni, a Myanmar academic based in Britain who goes by one name, said the past year had been one of the worst for people in his home country, and if the May 10 poll was free and fair, they may react by voting down the charter.

“They are too consumed by day-to-day economic survival needs, so much so that they will likely reject everything the junta offers,” he told AFP in Bangkok.