15 October 2016•Update: 15 October 2016
By Kyae Ye Lynn
YANGON, Myanmar
An enormous jade boulder that weighs up to 192 tons has been found in Myanmar’s restive Kachin State, officials said Saturday.
The 174,600-kilogram raw jade stone was discovered in a gem-rich region of Hpakant Township in northern Kachin on Tuesday, according to an information ministry statement.
The jade stone, the second largest to be mined in the country’s history, was excavated by Yadana Taung Tan company in cooperation with the mining ministry, it said.
The boulder was recorded as measuring 69 meters long, 54 meters wide and 51 meters high.
Tint Soe, a lower house lawmaker representing the area, described it as a “huge stone” Saturday.
“The stone is twice as high as me,” he told Anadolu Agency by phone.
The world's largest jade stone, weighing around 3,000 tons was discovered in Hpakant in 2000.
Myanmar is one of the world's biggest producers of jade, most found in the conflict-torn mountains of Kachin, where ethnic rebels have been fighting the government for more than half a century.
The vast majority of the gemstones, considered to be of the highest quality, are smuggled over the border to China.
The jade mining industry, which was monopolized by the military and elites during the former junta rule, still remains shrouded in secrecy despite reforms under a quasi-civilian government that took power in 2011, according to corruption watchdog Global Witness.
In a report in 2015, Global Witness estimated that the trade of jade from Myanmar in 2014 amounted to around $31 billion -- far exceeding the $3.4 billion sold at Myanmar’s gem emporium last year.
The estimated value of last year’s jade haul would amount to almost half of the impoverished country’s gross domestic product.
The report said that most profits have gone to the country’s “political elite” close to the former junta who were directly involved in the jade industry, instead of the state coffers.
