Cooperative Promotion Department draws up plans to help rice farmers

By THE NATION

 

Phichead Wiriyaphaha

 

Phichead Wiriyaphaha, director-general of Cooperative Promotion Department, has announced that his department is readying agricultural cooperatives nationwide to join the government’s unmilled rice scheme to help rice farmers after several private millers and agricultural cooperatives were forced to shut their rice buying stations due to a lack of revolving funds.

 

“After discussing with other partners in the scheme including the Department of Internal Trade, the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and the Public Warehouse Organisation, we came up with three measures to help rice farmers and regulate the price of unmilled rice,” said Phechead.

 

“The first measure is to stock unmilled rice in silos of farmers or partner organisations and pay a storage fee of Bt1,000-Bt1,500 per tonne to slow the release of rice on the market and prevent oversupply,” he said. “The second measure is to provide loans to farmers to enable them to process their rice into different value-added products. The total budget for this measure is set at Bt15 billion while the interest will be set at the MLR-1 of 4 per cent per year, with the government responsible for 3 per cent and farmers paying 1 per cent interest.”

 

For the last measure, the Cooperative Promotion Department will join the government in paying rice traders an additional 3 per cent in storage fees if they buy and store more unmilled rice in their stock for another 2-6 months. The total budget for this measure is set at Bt510 million and target of stocked rice is at 4 million tonnes.

 

“We will present the 3 measures to the Cabinet for approval on December 3,” said Phichead.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30378713

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2019-11-25

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'We are paying traders for the stocking and storing of rice ...'

And it was over such  behaviour that the monstrous, evil, satanic Yingluck regime (which, in the eyes of the holy Monk, Suthep, and his Establishment tyrants, was the very embodiment of wickedness: remember Yingluck's vampiric teeth jutting out of her ugly face, and all the blood dripping from her jaws?) were hounded out of existence and Yingluck herself forced into exile.

 

Lies and hypocrisy in this country know no bounds. Nor does shamelessness.

 

 

The rice growing industry is on a downhill slide and Thailand's glory days are slowly slipping away. For the second year Thailand failed to win it's famous jasmine rice, Thai Hom Mali award.

The 2019 award went to Vietnam and to rub salt into that wound it's price is about half that of Thailand's. Thai price is US$1,100 to $1,200 per tonne, while the Vietnamese version is around $600 per tonne.

Other countries are vastly improving the quality of their rice and lowering their production costs while Thai's just rest on their laurels doing the same old thing and arguing about storage. Amazingly some rice farmers are even blacking out street lighting near their their plantations because they believe it stunts the growth of their rice. ????

And then on top of all that there is the damage the high baht is doing to rice exports. 

All part of the sad and sorry ongoing rice saga. Subsidies to the rescue no doubt.

2 hours ago, webfact said:

“The first measure is to stock unmilled rice in silos of farmers or partner organisations and pay a storage fee of Bt1,000-Bt1,500 per tonne

Bt1,000- Bt1500 per tonne, for how long, is that per week,per month,

that going to make the rice very expensive,then there's the shrinkage,

from rats,and the two legged rats with trucks.I think having a godown

will be better than growing rice,

regards Worgeordie

 

Funny how they just don’t get the world market idea ????

the farmers don’t have money to eat, but they will get more loans that will later be forgiven.  Huge subsidies, but no progress in quality or efficiency-doomed.  He sad thing is, is that hat even if they had money for an education, that is becoming worthless as well-I see dark clouds ahead 

These three measures do nothing to make the rice any more competitive in the global market.

Subsidies for storage costs is a post-production cost - okay so the farmers break even but the underlying production cost and profit to be passed to the international buyer (importer) remains expensive due to production costs and high baht. 

Maybe there will be a fourth measure - a rice subsidy that lowers the cost of production and profit margin. But then that would take Thailand back to Prayut's rice granary pledge scheme started in circa 2015.