TDRI says Yingluck’s rice pledging scheme causes almost a trillion baht loss

[kamahele]

My calculator doesn't go that high but one trillion seems high even by Thai standards of exaggeration. Not that this whole rice pledging scheme wasn't a complete <deleted> disaster thought up by brainless idiots and fraught with abuse but a trillion baht? Really?

[IMA_FARANG]

As far as I am concerned, I would accept her publically saying:

• That she was duped
• Her brother made a lot of money off the scheme.
• That really, anyhow, it was just a way to get more votes for the PTP.
• And that as PM she didn't have the intelligence or experience to know she was being scammed by the "higher ups" in her party.
• That really she was just a pretty face, and others told her what to do.

If she went on Thai television and said all that, I would be happy to let her walk away without any punishment.

But, I doubt that would ever happen.

[bangrak]

Yingluck has to go to jail. Whatever the maximum sentence that can be imposed should be imposed. Her lack of oversight of the rice scheme is mind boggling!

She won't. I am also willing to bet they do not even bother to impeach her.

This junta seems to have lost the will to go after the corruption that plagues the kingdom, assuming they ever had it to begin with.

I suspect nothing is going to change and it will be back to business as usual real soon. If the good general was serious about reform, he would have jumped on the RTP over the Koh Tao debacle. That he did nothing, and even went so far as to praise them, pretty much says it all.

One thing that seems to go unnoticed in the haste to vilify the previous government is the cost of the protests, marital law and a coup on the country. According to the economist, a coup cost about 7% of GDP, 808 billion baht!!!! (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/10/thailands-economy)

The members of the triumphant mob that cheered the army to power are still enjoying their victory. Playing politics with the economy is an expensive business. The costs to Thailand’s economy are still piling up. Compared with trend economic growth the cost will be perhaps $20 billion to $30 billion from 2014 to 2016, which makes it roughly equal in value to the wealth of the Thai monarchy. One can only hope the junta’s upcoming performance is good enough to offset such a loss.

It took the previous government 3 years to accumulate this loss, but actions by the current regime will accomplish this in two! Add in the loss of growth resulting from Suthep's long drawn out protests and election blocking, and the total loss to society could top 1 trillion.

Who is going to be held accountable for this? And before blaming PTP for all that has happened, there were other avenues besides a coup available to resolve the issues in this country.

Hush, please, otherwise one will need to add that to Thaksin's YS/PTP/UDD's 'government''s bill too, as it is evidently clear to all not wearing ruby coated glasses that these protests would never possibly have happened when and if the people inside (not to speak about the ones behind) that 'government' would have been 'governing', a bit, and, a bit, for all Thais, instead of focussing on robbing this country blind for their own profit, even allowing themselves to steal away a big chunk of the tax payers' money they devoted to desastrous 'populist policies' to please their hunchmen and 'electorate'; no way so many people, a lot of not politically-engaged before, could have been, and for such a long time, motivated to protest! So, don't attempt to divert the attention from Dr Thaksin's biblically huge rice scam's losses (for the country, not for him, nota bene), please. No politically coloured intox, please!!

Edited November 5, 2014 by bangrak

[phantomfiddler]

Yingluck has to go to jail. Whatever the maximum sentence that can be imposed should be imposed. Her lack of oversight of the rice scheme is mind boggling!

No lack of oversight, I would call it total complicity !

[bangrak]

My calculator doesn't go that high but one trillion seems high even by Thai standards of exaggeration. Not that this whole rice pledging scheme wasn't a complete <deleted> disaster thought up by brainless idiots and fraught with abuse but a trillion baht? Really?

My advise to you: buy a new calculator then, when you want to follow up on this story, because these are probably quite conservative figures, really...

[GiantFan]

Who would want rice that is 10 years old?

[dcutman]

My calculator doesn't go that high but one trillion seems high even by Thai standards of exaggeration. Not that this whole rice pledging scheme wasn't a complete <deleted> disaster thought up by brainless idiots and fraught with abuse but a trillion baht? Really?

Actually, what the OP is saying, if they hold on to this crap for another 10 years it would cost an additional Bt300 billion to store and maintain it. Witch would bring the total loss to Bt960 billion.

[dcutman]

Who would want rice that is 10 years old?

I believe it would be called animal feed by then.

[Baerboxer]

Trillion baht later and Thai farmers are exactly where they were before... still poor...

Yes, but the Shin family fortune increased 450% in the same period. Got to have the right priorities when in government.

[Baerboxer]

The Chinese Thai do it so well. I feel sorry for the poor Thai who have lost power of their contry and wealth

Yep. All for their family interests regardless of cost or consequences to anyone else.

The disgraced former PM/DM and her ministers assured all there were no issues with her brother's rice scheme. Self financing, no funding issues, no quality issues, no quantity issues, no storage problems. All lies of course.

She can flit off buying over 30 pearl necklaces whilst many poor farmers are in worse debt than before.

Absolutely no remorse shown so far, and probably do the same again given the chance. Her family benefited massively from her time in office.

[Baerboxer]

Come on, let's get the audited figures instead of continuous speculation from people like Dr. Nipon or Dr. Warong. what happen to the big hoohah on corruption. Nothing heard so far. Yes there are losses but how much is still as unknown as the little green man in Mars.

Audited figures - that would be wonderful and very interesting.

Remember the amount of requests for such from the PTP administration - and all the contradictory figures that kept coming out from different ministers and their teams?

Maybe progress on the investigations into those involved in fraudulent export orders to China could also be revealed too?

[bangrak]

Trillion baht later and Thai farmers are exactly where they were before... still poor...

No, thy're NOT exactly where they were before! The rent for land, housing, machines has gone up a(n un)fair bit, and the prices for seeds, fertilizers, chemicals against insects and moulds have gone sky-high, ALL BECAUSE of the rice scam. Collateral damage you could call it,, but be reassured collateral it might be, but it was profit, for the, already rich and, influential people, like the Shinawatras, who are among the largest paddy fields' holders of the North, maybe, just to name one clan... So, the farmers are more poor, and dependent, than before! The poor, SMALL farmers have become A LOT more poor than before, as they could not even participate in the pledging scam to collect a tiny part of the taxpayers' mana, but saw all their charges, costs and expenses skyrocket!

[VINCENT2012]

Yingluck’s rice pledging scheme causes almost a trillion baht loss

wwwwwwwwwhoua.... and this woman can still walk around freely , go on holiday to see her brother like if nothing happend.

the thai government in those cases should take all her and cofrauder money and belongings, and put them in jail for long time.

these people can ruin a whole country for their own benefit.....!

when i think that they are boudhist i also get crasy......................what a big lie!

when are thais going to react to those tied, elite, high ranked thieves.

in spain this week , the anticorruption police department arrested and put about 40 corrupted government agent people in jail.

[ginjag]

fab4, on 05 Nov 2014 - 16:05, said:

ginjag, on 05 Nov 2014 - 15:47, said:

The stuttering parrot, on 05 Nov 2014 - 15:42, said:

Getting use to these stories and more to come.

A well planned coordinated campaign being orchestrated from above to try and turn the voting public against Yingluck and the PTP.

There can't be any protest as in another article martial law and meetings of groups of 5 is still banned.

All one way traffic at the moment with only legal resistance to the onslaught of bias media.

I don't think Yingluck will be impeached as she is far to popular and it would set the reconciliation process on its ear.

If no charges are brought soon then times up and hopefully she will stand again and let the people of Thailand show her detractors just how popular her and her party is.

Yingluck PTP. self inflicted wounds...................so popular ??? NOW ???? get out more.

Will there ever come a time when you manage to construct a sentence in a grammatical way and abandon this staccato, stream of conciousness, over punctuated nonsense?

Don't feed the troll, if he doesn't get the attention he needs he'll go away..

Any excuses you 3 on the trillion baht, or are you just using me as your excuse to skip the topic.

[Robby nz]

Trillion baht later and Thai farmers are exactly where they were before... still poor...

Nope they are not where they were before, they are deeper in debt than they ever were, that includes the 16 families who are now without a husband and father.

[brucec64]

Yingluck has to go to jail. Whatever the maximum sentence that can be imposed should be imposed. Her lack of oversight of the rice scheme is mind boggling!

She won't. I am also willing to bet they do not even bother to impeach her.

This junta seems to have lost the will to go after the corruption that plagues the kingdom, assuming they ever had it to begin with.

I suspect nothing is going to change and it will be back to business as usual real soon. If the good general was serious about reform, he would have jumped on the RTP over the Koh Tao debacle. That he did nothing, and even went so far as to praise them, pretty much says it all.

One thing that seems to go unnoticed in the haste to vilify the previous government is the cost of the protests, marital law and a coup on the country. According to the economist, a coup cost about 7% of GDP, 808 billion baht!!!! (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/10/thailands-economy)

The members of the triumphant mob that cheered the army to power are still enjoying their victory. Playing politics with the economy is an expensive business. The costs to Thailand’s economy are still piling up. Compared with trend economic growth the cost will be perhaps $20 billion to $30 billion from 2014 to 2016, which makes it roughly equal in value to the wealth of the Thai monarchy. One can only hope the junta’s upcoming performance is good enough to offset such a loss.

It took the previous government 3 years to accumulate this loss, but actions by the current regime will accomplish this in two! Add in the loss of growth resulting from Suthep's long drawn out protests and election blocking, and the total loss to society could top 1 trillion.

Who is going to be held accountable for this? And before blaming PTP for all that has happened, there were other avenues besides a coup available to resolve the issues in this country.

Hush, please, otherwise one will need to add that to Thaksin's YS/PTP/UDD's 'government''s bill too, as it is evidently clear to all not wearing ruby coated glasses that these protests would never possibly have happened when and if the people inside (not to speak about the ones behind) that 'government' would have been 'governing', a bit, and, a bit, for all Thais, instead of focussing on robbing this country blind for their own profit, even allowing themselves to steal away a big chunk of the tax payers' money they devoted to desastrous 'populist policies' to please their hunchmen and 'electorate'; no way so many people, a lot of not politically-engaged before, could have been, and for such a long time, motivated to protest! So, don't attempt to divert the attention from Dr Thaksin's biblically huge rice scam's losses (for the country, not for him, nota bene), please. No politically coloured intox, please!!

There were many alternatives to a coup. You can't hang that one on the previous government. The cost of the coup equals the rice scheme loss, and the cost of the coup falls squarely on the ones who staged the coup.

[metisdead]

A post containing unattributed content as well as containing a link to another forum has been removed:

13) You will not post links to other Thailand forums, or forums which could reasonably be construed as competition to Thaivisa.com or its sponsors.

[bangrak]

Come on, let's get the audited figures instead of continuous speculation from people like Dr. Nipon or Dr. Warong. what happen to the big hoohah on corruption. Nothing heard so far. Yes there are losses but how much is still as unknown as the little green man in Mars.

Audited figures - that would be wonderful and very interesting.

Remember the amount of requests for such from the PTP administration - and all the contradictory figures that kept coming out from different ministers and their teams?

Maybe progress on the investigations into those involved in fraudulent export orders to China could also be revealed too?

No, Khun Loh cannot remember, never anything detrimental to his ... (fill the gap, Eric), and he was writing 'audited' to oppose the present figures as part of the attempts we will see made in the next days to create further delay about the results of the rice scam's abyss, nowhere to connect 'audited' with any action, or the lack of it, (the word: 'malfeasance' comes to mind) by YS or members of 'her' 'government', ...and administration!

Alas, I'm not sure it is a bad tactical move, as what we see (or rather don't) from the new-people-in-power feels like the Shins' clan would have found more breeches than walls in the strategies for changes and reform, what would be a shame for genarals, or did the walls come down already thanks to, golden, trumpets changing hands? Maybe some more time will see all Shins, YS in front, out of dangerous waters, and by then whatever figures will be looked down at by the members of the clan and their followers...! 'What's the deal?', would be the question to ask, but asking controversial questions one will anyway never get any decent answer on, has never been the most healthy sport for reporters in Thailand... 'Do what I say, don't see what I do' remains the motto.

[Chris Lawrence]

'The positive news in this is that the market overhang for good quality rice is now less than 2 million tonnes, which means that once this is worked through it's likely that prices can stage some sort of recovery.

This will still take some time, as Thailand, when it was the world's top exporter of the grain, shipped around 10 million tonnes a year, meaning even 2 million tonnes of stockpile is a significant amount for the market to absorb.

The not so positive news is that Thailand has 12.6 million tonnes of rapidly deteriorating rice that it will become increasingly desperate to sell in the next year or so.'

'What happens to the spoiled rice isn't clear, but the chances are it will end up being processed into ethanol.

Thailand has 21 ethanol plants with a combined capacity of 4.79 megaliters per day, equivalent to about 30,100 barrels per day of fuel, according to a research paper on the International Energy Agency's website.

These plants mainly process cassava and molasses, but presumably could use rice if the price provided sufficient incentive.' http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/31/us-column-russell-rice-thailand-idUSKBN0IK0Y020141031?feedType=RSS&virtualBrandChannel=11563

A lot of work to get rid of the overhang. This will be keeping the prices down.

But they may look at processing the spoiled rices as ethanol. I am not certian but I think there is no problem with what quality the rice is to go thru this process.

Thdey also need to be careful not to spoil their chances in the tender process.

[scorecard]

<script type='text/javascript'>window.mod_pagespeed_start = Number(new Date());</script>

This report is so full of holes it could be Swiss Cheese.

For example?

[ginjag]

There were many alternatives to a coup. You can't hang that one on the previous government. The cost of the coup equals the rice scheme loss, and the cost of the coup falls squarely on the ones who staged the coup.

Alternatives ??/ like shoot the entire cabinet ??................fly all the PTP out of the country.................leave it as it was and Thailands absolutely bankrupt....................or bring back the amnesty and have ALL the shins here in control.

[brucec64]

Alternatives like give martial law a chance to clear suthep from the streets and then have an election.

[halloween]

".......the government had spent up to 980 billion baht to buy up to 54.4 million tons of rice........."

"A total of 826 rice mills and 1,685 warehouses also joined the scheme.
The scheme had 20 rice inspectors."

Damning figures which show the rice scam was designed to allow corruption.

[bangrak]

Me get out more ginjag?

Mate I've just had 2 rounds of golf and been fishing over the last two days.

Not sit in front of the computer waiting for the big Y subject to come up so I can dominate the thread.

She really has done your head in mate.

Smell the roses for a change.

Your like a wigwam and a teepee .Your two tents!Tense if you didn't get it.

Maybe a bit of practice will make you hit the ball straighter in the future in order for you not to spend much time fishing for balls in the water hazards (as you know most Clubs prohibit it), this might take a while though as you have shown to sometimes 'hook' and sometimes 'fade'... Re-education, then?

[SOTIRIOS]

......22 billion dollars.....???

...and that's only the rice.......

[jamiesilver]

So it was Taksin that was praised for taking Thailand out of massive debt when he came to power, by killing and taking back the drug money of dealers, close family and friends and anyone standing in the wrong place and the wrong time.

He managed to take Thailand out of debt - Then his final FY was to put it back in debt by a trillion baht.
And still the reds are saying how good he was because of a 50 baht health scheme or a few thousand baht vote for me payouts.
The uneducated are easy to manipulate - its a shame there are so many of them....

[marcusd]

Yingluck has to go to jail. Whatever the maximum sentence that can be imposed should be imposed. Her lack of oversight of the rice scheme is mind boggling!

She is in THAI RICH PERSONS GOAL now. It is called JUNTA please can I go?

[marcusd]

......22 billion dollars.....???

...and that's only the rice.......

Well whats a few billion between friends? And beleive me he must still have many friends because HE is flying all over th world .... and in another thread here SWEDEN can get a guy with THAI COPS at the Laos border. So MISTER BIGS share the dosh around and there is a loud scream from above to keep the masses happy

[ginjag]

Alternatives like give martial law a chance to clear suthep from the streets and then have an election.

There was never to be elections until the all the bad apples are removed from the barrel. Final....no skirting around it....nothing to do with Martial law......out out out PTP. solution now, not yet but in a year or so. Be patient now followers of the Shins.

[marcusd]

Yingluck has to go to jail. Whatever the maximum sentence that can be imposed should be imposed. Her lack of oversight of the rice scheme is mind boggling!

She won't. I am also willing to bet they do not even bother to impeach her.

This junta seems to have lost the will to go after the corruption that plagues the kingdom, assuming they ever had it to begin with.

I suspect nothing is going to change and it will be back to business as usual real soon. If the good general was serious about reform, he would have jumped on the RTP over the Koh Tao debacle. That he did nothing, and even went so far as to praise them, pretty much says it all.

One thing that seems to go unnoticed in the haste to vilify the previous government is the cost of the protests, marital law and a coup on the country. According to the economist, a coup cost about 7% of GDP, 808 billion baht!!!! (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/10/thailands-economy)

The members of the triumphant mob that cheered the army to power are still enjoying their victory. Playing politics with the economy is an expensive business. The costs to Thailand’s economy are still piling up. Compared with trend economic growth the cost will be perhaps $20 billion to $30 billion from 2014 to 2016, which makes it roughly equal in value to the wealth of the Thai monarchy. One can only hope the junta’s upcoming performance is good enough to offset such a loss.

It took the previous government 3 years to accumulate this loss, but actions by the current regime will accomplish this in two! Add in the loss of growth resulting from Suthep's long drawn out protests and election blocking, and the total loss to society could top 1 trillion.

Who is going to be held accountable for this? And before blaming PTP for all that has happened, there were other avenues besides a coup available to resolve the issues in this country.

Brucey Babe, the WORLD economy is STUFFED. Not just Thailand. Look at poor old Russia? they have dropped a few trillion. Thailand's TRADE would have dropped regardless because of world economics. NO ONE is banning cars, or products. TOURISM is stuffed because no man woman or child has the money.

Chinese do not maketh the money go round and LARGE numbers of Chinese do not equal one plane load of Europeans for SPENDING power.

The Thai TOURIST economy may have suffered by the coup but not overseas trade.

Where does any country say "OOOH COUP noyt buying Toyota now"?