YANGON, MYANMAR - Military-ruled Myanmar's opium poppy cultivation rose by three percent year-on-year in 2008 but produced far lower yields of the illicit drug overall, the home affairs minister said Friday.

At a ceremony to mark the UN's anti-drug day, the ruling junta announced that 28,500 hectares of poppies were grown last year compared to 27,700 hectares in 2007, but production of opium had declined by 11 percent.

Opium production had fallen from 460 tonnes in 2007 to 410 tonnes last year, home affairs minister Major General Maung Oo said at a ceremony in the administrative capital Naypyidaw.

"Myanmar has been actively cooperating with the international community and at the same time has been implementing anti-drug campaigns with added momentum, based on its own strength and resources," Maung Oo said.

The Southeast Asian nation remains the world's second largest opium producer after Afghanistan.

Myanmar's junta has vowed to make the country drug-free by 2014 by following a 15-year elimination plan drawn up in 1999.

There has been a huge drop in opium cultivation in the country since then but poverty and the global financial crisis have caused many farmers to return to the trade.

The US says Myanmar has also become a hub for amphetamine production, which Maung Oo said the government was also tackling.

But in March Myanmar's foreign ministry accused the US of giving "inaccurate and politically motivated assessments" in its February global narcotics report, which said there had been a significant increase in opium poppy cultivation.

Maung Oo said the number of drug users had declined from 61,455 in 2005 to 52,687 people in January 2009.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.