pb1936

Greed and selfishness, the hallmark of Thailand.

Completely different and conflicting reports every day.......... sign of a Government in panic.

What an utter fiasco.......... incompetence on an astronomical scale.

This makes Thailand look even more ridiculous.

Don't you just love it..............beats any comedy movie.

Clearly this is part of the cover-up,,,,, and even more clearly the " missing rice" was never there in the first place.

A big scam indeed....... bet many Thais wish they had thought of this one.

That looks like a Merc.

Yes, the car in the first photo is a Merc.

They couldn't organise a p*ss - up in a brewery.

What is a "graduate student".............surely the person is either a graduate or a student.

Well, that's religion for you.

An amazing admission by a Government minister ! Likely he will be moved to an inactive post.

It's very hard to believe that anything like 20 per cent of revenue goes to education............. it's obviously not spent on teaching or provision of good text books.

This won't be the only dispute in the implementation of the proposed water management scheme. Environmental assessment studies have not even been carried out. More chaos ahead, chaps !

What a delicious mess .... could bring the government down. At least I hope we will soon get a better exchange rate !

One scam after another............ absolutely hilarious !!

Maybe I am missing something here........As I understand it the " rice pledging " scheme was concocted as a subsidy ( vote buying ) to the farmers. It was known from the start that the government would buy from the farmers at above market price. On the sale of the rice the government would take a loss...... there was always going to be a loss. Since the govt. would have been aware of the amount of loss per ton of rice and would also have known the approximate quantity of the harvest, it follows that they would have known the approx. cost of the subsidy per annum.

Why therefore is there all the fuss about the govt. making a loss and how come there is so much rice in store and not sold....... before this scheme started one presumes that the harvested rice was sold to the buying markets without being stored until it became unsellable ?

If you go to live in another country, the word is " emigrate ", not " immigrate " !!! For goodness sake.

There seems little point in speculating about losses incurred because the information released is likely to be a complete fabrication, and doubtless will remain so.

Maybe someone should tell them that if the tax were a "reasonable" rate - buyers would just pay it and low and behold, surprise of surprises, imports would increase, 100% of taxes would be paid on 100% of cars imported - all because it would be easier to pay the tax than to avoid it. When you have an absurd tax rate - again... surprise, surprise - people will try to figure out ways to avoid paying it. All politicians should be required to take Econ 101 before being eligible for any office.

This is the point, well said. I suspect however that the astronomical tax rate is related to the desire to make luxury vehicles beyond all but the highly privileged. It cannot surely be to protect local manufacturers because they are not capable of producing similar products.

maybe time to stop the xenophobic 307% import scam ... as a farang or thai, you have two options... drive local crap or pay super inflated prices for a descent car

All this arises out of a ridiculous "protective" taxation system.

eventually Thailand will have to stop this one-sided tax on imported cars - or at least reuse it to non-prohibitive levels at present it is just another breeding ground for corruption graft and nepotism......

thailand has signed fre-trade agreements with such countries as Japan and Australia which are well into their introduction periods - it will be interesting to see what happens when the duties on imports from Japan disappear.

Agree entirely............ This is the route of the problem.

The rules for importing of a private vehicle are quite ridiculous. When I came to Thailand I owned a very nice, but old, BMWK110LT motor cycle which had taken me right around Europe a coule of times.

It's present market value was about $3,000 (14 years old) but on enquiring I would have had to pay close to $10,000 to legally import it for personal use. I bought it in the UK & subsequently shipped it back to Australia. At that time it was valued at $5,500 by the local BMW dealer - had to pay 10% of that price $550 as GST to land it in AUS.

Needless to say, it did not come to Thailand, but got sold via Ebay in AUS.

What is the point of Thailand taxes on such imports??

It's called Protectionism, Arrogance, and a desire to deny access by the average Thai to what is seen as high status items.

The amount of tax charged on imported goods is a complete disgrace. It's not as though it is to protect home industries because there are no manufacturers here capable of making the products.

I have recently learned that a foreign company investing in a manufacturing base here has the same tax levied on home sales as would apply if the product were imported.

Maybe when the Asean Community is fully operative the Thai Government will be forced to change some of their habits.