Thailand’s rice committee yesterday announced new loan schemes worth US$514 million to help rice growers struggling with falling prices as farmers of the grain become the new battleground between the junta and the opposition ahead of next year’s elections.
Tumbling rice prices have sent the ruling junta scrambling to roll out rescue packages as both the military government and the opposition try to woo politically powerful rice farmers ahead of the vote expected by late next year.
Farmers will receive 10,500 baht (US$299) for every tonne of white paddy stored, Thailand’s Minister of Commerce Apiradee Tantraporn told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
Farmers who store Thai Pathum Thani fragrant rice are to receive 11,300 baht per tonne.
“The overall budget is set at 18 billion baht,” Apiradee said.
“This is to help relieve grievances farmers are facing while the main crop is being harvested,” she said.
Prices in Thailand last week hit a 13-month low, hurting farmers in the world’s second-largest rice exporter.
With the rice harvest season underway, the military government last week said it would offer loans worth US$1.3 billion to jasmine rice farmers, on the condition that they store the grain for six months to slow down market supply.
Ousted former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was overthrown in a May 2014 military coup, on Friday last week attacked the military government’s recent rescue packages and said the measures were no different to her government’s rice policy.
The government in turn has warned Yingluck against politicizing the rice issue.
Yingluck faces criminal negligence charges in court over her administration’s rice policy, which paid farmers well above market rates for their rice.
The scheme was popular with rice farmers in the agrarian northeast, but cost billions of US dollars in losses to state coffers.
Yingluck and her billionaire brother, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup, are loved by the rural and urban poor, but they are hated by the country’s elite who accuse them of corruption, which they deny.
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