Commerce Minister: Rice Pledging Scheme Continues, Losses Lower Than Bt260 Billion

[rubl]

I'm really and truly surprised with you guys. I mean we have "Commerce Minister: Rice Pledging Scheme Continues, Losses Lower Than Bt260 Billion"

Obviously there is no further need for discussion :-)

[OzMick]

I'm finding current news quite handy to explain this in terms my Thai friends understand. THB 1 billion buys 1000 school buses - your government has admitted losing THB 260 billion.

Are you trying to imply they have mislaid 260,000 school buses somewhere??? Probably stuck in the traffic jams with the 10 million new cars.

No, I was trying to put in real terms figures that are pretty much meaningless.

I found a better way to explain it to the g/f.

B100,000 in B1000 notes is about 3cm thick. Stack the blocks until they hit our 3m ceiling and you have B10,000,000.

I can fit 6 stacks per floor tile, B60 million.

Our 2 bedroom house is 25x25 floor tiles, so if I stack it to the ceiling with B1000 notes, it comes to B37.5 billion.

So we need 7 houses to store B260 billion.

Then I suggest she get a box of matches and burn it. The look on her face was priceless.

Edited June 7, 2013 by OzMick

[Dap]

well thats ok then,we can move on to something really really important,

If a financial loss due to government muppetry in the region of 9 billion $ U.S. is not newsworthy to you...why bother posting here ? Even worse...why am I wasting my time replying to your 'post'.....

I read the post as "tongue in cheek". Was I wrong?

[khunken]

I have a sneaking suspicion that what will be 'revealed' tomorrow will be just as revealing as all those G-t-G rice deals that the Commerce Minister 'revealed' over the last year or so.

If Kittirat does the 'revealing' it will be a similar version of the whole truth, won't it?

[rubl]

Will the Commerce Minister host the "Your government at work" television show tomorrow ?

[Thai at Heart]

I have a sneaking suspicion that what will be 'revealed' tomorrow will be just as revealing as all those G-t-G rice deals that the Commerce Minister 'revealed' over the last year or so.

If Kittirat does the 'revealing' it will be a similar version of the whole truth, won't it?

But the export figures are in the public domain and don't differ from those in the government figures. Orzya.com has the tender results, because the other side declares them anyway.

There are no secret gtog deals.

[tampasailor]

Insight: Smuggling rice to Thailand - like coals to Newcastle

(Reuters) - Hidden in 18-wheeler trucks, carts and pick-up vans, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice are being smuggled from Cambodia and Myanmar into Thailand, although the country holds enough stocks to meet half the world's annual trade in the commodity.

A populist program to support prices has led to the Thai government paying its farmers almost double prevailing prices in Cambodia and Myanmar. Farmers and traders in the neighboring countries are trying to take advantage, sending their grain across the border to be sold into the Thai intervention scheme.

The equivalent of 750,000 tonnes of milled rice is being smuggled into Thailand a year, mainly from Cambodia and Myanmar, according to estimates of analysts and traders who have studied the illicit shipments.

"No one can differentiate which one is Thai rice and which one is Cambodian rice. That makes it easy to smuggle rice in and make a profit by selling it to the government," said Kiattisak Kalayasirivat, managing director at Thai trader Novel Agritrade.

click for the article

[tampasailor]

Myanmar Benefits From Thai Rice Subsidy As Thai Traders Increase Rice Trade

By Sophie Song

on July 15 2013

The Thai government has embarked on a disastrous and costly rice subsidy program to benefit its rice farmers – the program cost the government $4.4 billion last year – but an unexpected beneficiary turned out to be Myanmar, as Thai traders flock to the neighboring country to buy rice that will then be sold to the Thai government at a hiked price.

"For a long time, Thailand did not buy any rice from Myanmar… But at the beginning of this year, Thai traders started to buy normal rice and broken rice [grains] from Myanmar and transport it across the border," said Ye Min Aung, the secretary of the Myanmar Rice Merchants Federation (MRMF), according to the Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based Myanmar newspaper.

Thailand’s scheme had been simple, according to Time magazine. The government would buy rice from local farmers at a generous price, as high as 50 percent above market rates at times, and it would cut off exports to the rest of the world. Being the largest rice exporter, Thailand expected global prices would spike from the resulting shortage, allowing the government to recuperate its cost by selling to the world at a premium.

Unfortunately, for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration, it underestimated the power of the global market. Traders began to switch their purchases from Thailand to suppliers in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and in some cases Myanmar.

Sophie Song writes about emerging markets in Asia, and is particularly interested in foreign investment in the Southeast Asian economies.

[Bluespunk]

Panic appears to be settling amongst PT as more and more information about just how disastrous this policy has turned out is revealed. Threats are being issued to officials and public alike every time something new is said or repeated. Now the departments of govt are publicly contradicting each other. I can't see how PT are going to get out of this one, but I'm sure they'll try.

[Ricardo]

Perhaps PTP might declare that this is a planned/expected side-effect, of the Big-Boss's idea, and that Thailand is the new Hub of ASEAN Charitable-behaviour towards poorer countries ?

To be followed by a Crack-Down, and threats to sue anybody who reports-on or discusses the rice-imports, from Burma & Cambodia ?