The SWITCH-Asia Tha Bar Wa Project implemented by WWF, SBFIC and MFPEA, has been set up to promote cleaner production practices amongst SMEs in the food and beverage sector. COVID-19 has affected the implementation of the project activities and thus, the project wanted to better understand the situation on how the pandemic and various restrictions imposed by the Government have impacted small and medium F&B businesses and their willingness to keep investing in green solutions. Hence, the Tha Bar Wa Project conducted research from 20-10-2020 to 25-11-2020 to take stock of Myanmar’s F&B companies’ current operations, the challenges and impacts of COVID-19 they encounter and their plans to resume normal operation.
This report will summarise the current challenges of COVID-19 for F&B enterprises; requirements of F&B enterprises to mitigate these challenges; and how enterprises may be assisted to improve their energy efficiency and wastewater treatment process during or after the pandemic. With this information, Tha Bar Wa identifies needs of the F&B industry during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the project can best assist enterprises in adopting cleaner/greener production practices.
The Tha Bar Wa project is able to assist enterprises by providing training and capacity building activities including linking them with project partner banks for green loans requirement. The information retrieved from the questionnaire will help to direct effort and resources into the most appropriate need-based solutions.
