At around 10:30 a.m. today Tuesday 16th February 2014 normal broadcasting on Thai television was interrupted for the screening of an address given by the Prime Minister H.E. Yingluck Shinawatra.
The address was on the subject of the government rice purchase scheme.
Thailand’s leading English language newspaper gave no report on the address on its website which carries news items through the day.
How can such an event not warrant reporting?
Eventually the Bangkok Post got around to doing a report : http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/395707/yingluck-summoned-on-rice-scheme-corruption-charges
The “Bangkok Post” editorial on 20 Feb. gives an appropriate comment on her speech under “PM passes the buck on rice”and I quote -:
“There is no mention by the government of about one million rice farmers who have not benefited at all” as they can only produce enough rice for home consumption
The rice pledging policy was meant to be sustainable project to benefit rice farmers with a taxpayer funded 500 billion baht revolving fund. To date the Thai rice exporters say 26.75 million ton of rice have been bought by the government from 4 harvests for 780 billion baht and revenues from rice sales are only estimated to be 130 billion baht. That leaves the government scrambling to find the 150 billion baht to pay rice farmers and blaming everyone else that they cannot borrow money to pay the rice farmers.
The real issue is why can’t the government sell the estimated 17 million tons ( a state secret) of aging rice in the storages to raise the money to pay rice farmers. Do they expect to be able to use taxpayers funds for ever while the rice storages overflow with rotting rice ??
As pointed out tin the Wall Street Journal 6/2/2014 “Thai effort to control the rice market backfires” the plan of Thaksin to corner the world rice market was a poorly designed policy that is costing the Thai taxpayers dearly and is riddled with corruption as the Thai National Antii-Corruption Commission report due out shortly will show. A recent Thailand Development Resaarch Institute study on the rice pledging scheme shows that only 18% of poor farmers ( who make up 30% of all farmers ) had benefited from the project. However 82% of the rich and middle income farmers were beneficiaries.
In relation to the 500 billion baht revolving rice fund the return so far is only 18 baht for every 100 baht of taxpayers funds used. Would you invest in a project showing and 82% loss ??
Peter Hoare
Agricultural Adviser