Several dozen used cars are being smuggled into Burma from Thailand and China everyday, say car dealers and local residents in Burma. Car dealers must pay large bribes to government authorities and insurgents to smuggle the vehicles into the country.

About 40 cars cross the border checkpoint at Three Pagodas Pass, near the Thai border town Sangklaburi, into Burma each day, says a Mon resident of the town. The resident says car dealers are driving the smuggled cars to Moulmein, the capital of Mon State, about 100 miles northwest of the border checkpoint.

Used sedans, vans, pick-up trucks and other vehicles are imported from Japan by Thai businessmen, who then sell the vehicles to Burmese car dealers on the border, says Maung Kyaw, a car dealer based in Moulmein.

Burma’s military government has unofficially banned individuals and companies from importing cars since the middle of the 1990s, which caused car prices to increase dramatically. Currently, the military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings is the country’s only legal importer of motor vehicles.

In recent months, the used car market in Moulmein has been booming, says Maung Kyaw. People who want to buy used cars come to Moulmein from other cities, he added.

To smuggle cars to Moulmein, car dealers on the border have to bribe government authorities and ethnic groups who control checkpoints along the way. Smugglers must pay about 1 million kyat (US $1,200) per vehicle to move the cars through the several gates on the road. A fee of about 100,000 or 200,000 kyat is required at each gate, says Maung Kyaw.

The checkpoints are controlled by ethnic ceasefire groups such as the New Mon State Party, Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, Karen National Union and others are controlled by the government. Some of these groups are involved in smuggling cars, says the car dealer in Moulmein.

He added that along the Thai border the price of a used car is about 150,000 baht (about US $3,700). But the prices jump to about 5 million kyat (approximately US $6,000) at the car market in Moulmein, with some vehicles fetching up to 10 million kyat.

Besides the route from Sangklaburi to Moulmein, used cars are also being smuggled from the northern Thai border town of Mae Sai where they are transported to a market in Mandalay. Some smuggled cars in Mandalay also come from Muse, a town on the Chinese border.

In Rangoon, where police keep an eye out for illegal cars, drivers of smuggled vehicles must be cautious, says Maung Kyaw, adding that if a smuggled car is found in the capital, the owner is punished and the vehicle confiscated.