28,000 Thai Farmers to Receive 4 Billion Baht Debt-Relief

[Jacob Maslow]

A new scheme approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday aims to help relieve farmer debt. Thailand’s Deputy Finance Minister states that the new scheme will help 818,000 farmers that have been loaned more than 116 billion baht.

The scheme went into effect on Tuesday and will last until March 31, 2016.

The first group of farmers, 28,000, will have 4 billion baht in debt waived. All of these farmers currently have no means to repay their outstanding debt.

The second group of farmers, between 300,000 and 400,000, will have their debt restructured. This will allow the 48 billion baht of debt owned by these farmers to have their repayment of principal suspended for 3 years. Interest will still need to be paid during this time. Principal will need to be repaid in a period of 10 years, but loan extensions are able to be sought in some circumstances.

Another group of farmers, estimated to be 450,000 people, will have their repayment periods extended with fines waived. These are farmers that are experiencing seasonal difficulties due to water shortages and other environmental factors. Extensions will be provided on an individual basis.

All of the above farmers have been loaned money from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives.

-- 2015-04-02

[ezzra]

Yep... keep throwing good money after bad, throwing at people to fix a momentary problems,

not a long time solutions, and that what the farmers want year after year, they're not interested

in long time solutions, they happy to receive their yearly handouts and the current government

agree, just to keep the quiet....

[EricBerg]

It's good to give them some relief. But they very much need to be educated how to do their financial planning. Spend now and don't worry about tomorow is a dead end street. Givce them more time to repay their loan (ten years) but keep paying interest. Makes them realise the consequences of their loan and makes them reconsider if it was wise what they did with that loan.

[willyumiii]

Why is assistance to farmers always referred to as a scheme?

Farming is very difficult.

Environmental conditions and market fluctuations make i event more difficult, sometimes impossible to make ends meet.

Without assistance many could not farm.

What would the world eat without farms?

Farming has always been a gamble, assistance guarantees that people can continue to farm, even in bad times.

Assistance to farmers in tough times is insurance....not a scheme.

[Srikcir]

I appreciate the Junta's support for populist policies to provide immediate economic relief to a targeted group of people in the Thai society who are in need of financial assistance:

- 28,000, will have 4 billion baht in debt waived

- 300,000 and 400,000 to have debt restructured with principle suspended for 3 years

- 450,000 to have repayment periods extended with fines waived

Last year the Junta-led government through the BAAC distributed Bt30-billion to 2.8 million rice farming families, established a Bt10-billion budget to shore up the price of concentrated latex for rubber farmers, approved milk price hikes for dairy farmers, and through BAAC injected Bt3-billion to help the cassava farmers to delay cassava harvests.

BUT

Farmers are not the only Thais affected adversely by debts. The Junta needs to develop a comprehensive agriculture plan and general economic plan that helps ALL Thais with debt issues. The Junta needs to institute necessary economic safety nets, massive governmental investments, and stimulate the business environment to create a growing economy.

Thus far, the government only seems capable of providing quick handouts and subsidies that do not fit into any overall economic strategy. Eventually, the Junta's targeted economic distributions will burden the government budget in 2016 which will further hamper implementation of any overall economic support system given a continued stagnation of the economy and decreasing tax revenues.

[Godders]

And this from an un-elected administration which condemned the "populist" policies of the Shinawatra governments it overthrew.

[Godders]

And this from an un-elected administration which condemned the "populist" policies of the Shinawatra governments it overthrew.

[Godders]

And this from an un-elected administration which condemned the "populist" policies of the Shinawatra governments it overthrew.

[Cake Monster]

Good work if you can get it.

Laze around all day drinking lao-Khao from dawn to dusk, drive a top of the range brand new pickup truck, have 3 iphones, ( 1 for missus, 1 for gf, and 1 for business ) and when things get tight after all the cash has been spent on gf, get the Government to haul you out of the doo-doo.

Only in Thailand

[Fat Haggis]

Good work if you can get it.

Laze around all day drinking lao-Khao from dawn to dusk, drive a top of the range brand new pickup truck, have 3 iphones, ( 1 for missus, 1 for gf, and 1 for business ) and when things get tight after all the cash has been spent on gf, get the Government to haul you out of the doo-doo.

Only in Thailand

And you have personally sat there from dusk till dawn observing 28,000 farmers in their social habits? Hyperbole much?

The rice farmers around me would love to have these luxuries you talk about, you do realise that you're also describing a good deal of farangs.

Most of them never qualified for the rice scam, yeah lets all educate these farmers who have been growing rice in their families for generations, what is they say ?

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks" ?

It's not the current farmers that need educating, they're too set in their ways, its the next generation but is there a desire for a 19 year old lad to become a rice farmer these days?

It takes a special breed of person to be a farmer in any country, never mind Thailand where it's overflowing with farang experts, now there's a thought, why don't the experts here go and lease the land from these "ignorant ad drunk farmers" and turn the situation around, after all, most are well suited to sitting around all day talking shit and getting drunk from dusk till dawn,

[Ulic]

That's right, kick the can down the road.

[rametindallas]

These farmers were deceived by the Yingluck government into believing, through repeated statements of the government, that the program would continue for years. This was the government they had voted in and the government which had claimed it wanted to help them. Why wouldn't they trust Yingluck? These farmers, believing the government, invested heavily in acquiring more land, equipment and began repairing their houses, etc.. And then, with little or no warning, the government pulled the rug out from under them. Had the program continued, it is quite possible these debts would have been easily repaid (at the expense of the rest of Thailand). Considering the over-all losses already accrued to the country from the corrupt scheme, this four billion Baht is a drop in the bucket and the present government's action will drastically change the lives of those farmers most in need for the better. The restructuring the other loans is also contributing to minimizing the damage to those most directly hurt by the corrupt Yingluck government in their quest for monetary gain for Thaksin and his associates. I wish there was a hell for Yingluck and Thaksin to burn in forever for all the misery they have caused.

[Fat Haggis]

I wish there was a hell for Yingluck and Thaksin to burn in forever for all the misery they have caused.

Have you spent a summer in Dubai? That's pretty close to hell.. In all seriousness, I can feel your frustrations with this scheme, but have you thought about how many of these farmers were not already in some form of debt prior to entering this scheme?

Don't you feel that perhaps many joined the scheme seeing it as a way to clear those prior debts, but the scheme so badly managed and funds disappearing left right and centre, and the market price plummeting that it was impossible for them to back out?

The farmers got the sympathy during the protests and now they're plight is being addressed, they're getting slatted, damned if they do, damned if they don't.

They're getting slated by Farangs on here, who for the majority all they know about rice is they eat it 3 times a day!!

Whilst I'm partly sympathetic to their plight, they too were responsible for their debts, IF they had them prior to joining the scheme, what we're seeing and reading about is mostly about the scheme farmers, what about the poor farmers who sold locally who have also had to take out loans, due to the price drop, increase in land costs, increase in means for production, ferilizers etc?

Whilst the scheme can be blamed for a lot of things, it cant really be blamed for the market price drop, which is always about supply and demand, that's simple economics mate, any market that involves productivity suffers the same, how many business go bust globally because the demand decreased but the supply increased?

Diversifying from rice growing can't just happen over night to replace the revenue from rice, it takes time for crops to grow, and you need to grow enough to cover your overheads and repay your loans, as well as every day bills for repairs and maintenence etc. What do you think will happen if half these farmers binned growing rice and took up growing Casava? The price for the casava on harvest would drop, and thus effecting all the other casava growers, who were just getting by, it's a vicious circle with growing produce, if the supply is greater than demand, it's logical the buyers will reduce their prices, and the suffering and debts continue.

I don't think I've seen any young farmers on either Casava or rice, they're either women, or older men, in their late 50's and 60's, hey have no sons to "educate" them, or to take over the farming, so what other options is left to them?

[seajae]

"Whilst the scheme can be blamed for a lot of things, it cant really be blamed for the market price drop, which is always about supply and demand"

Actually mate it can in this case as they encouraged the farmers to up the production and grow a lot more rice than they usually did. They also started to store more instead of selling the hope of raising the world price but other countries started to produce more to cover the loss which meant that what they had done was totally useless as it created a huge glut that dropped the price and they in turn lost their market share because of it all. It was a bad scheme from wo to go, the other problem was the greed at the thought of making extra cash, not just the farmers but all the others involved, land owners, storage owners, farming supplies, they all stuck their fingers in the pie, bad idea, badly set up and bad to the end

[seajae]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

putting your foot in it today arent you, the farmers were never going to get any money and never did or did you miss all the ones that necked themselves over the debts yl caused. The only ones to make money were the ptp support teams, you know, all the big northern land owners, all the big northern farm supplies, all the big northern stage places who all just happened to be reds/ptp/thaksin fans. You need a spare toilet roll there so you can wipe all the stuff dribbling down your chin

Edited April 3, 2015 by seajae

[djjamie]

Why are the Junta offering debt relief? One could suggest it is a populist policy often described in conjunction with democratic governments trying to win votes. After the vote is won they dismiss the target group with hollow rhetoric and fake promises.

So why do the farmers that are committing suicide need this relief. Apparently and according to yingluck who has ignored the difficulties of the farmers for political gain for over 3 years (yes, yes she was elected!) has insisted right up to the very end that "The scheme had helped the farmers. It helped them. So they should not need this relief.

So why are they receiving 4 billion baht in debt relief when they supposedly received nearly a trillion baht from the tax payer over 3 years which is over half of the 1.5 trillion received from the shin governments over 14 years.

As the tax payers of Thailand I am sure they would be mighty upset that 1.5 trillion baht of their tax money has gone to the farmers and the farmers are still in debt.

I can guarantee the PTP ministers, warehouse owners, criminals that smuggled rice into Thailand for financial gain and rice exporters don't need debt relief!!!

Edited April 3, 2015 by djjamie

[halloween]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

What was rational about Yingluk's rice scam?

How much of the B700 billion, and rising, lost ended up in the pockets of poor rice farmers?

How much of the B700+ billion loss was steered away from the non-rice growers of Thailand who live nowhere near Bangkok?

Just how is a glut of production and warehouses full of rotting rice bought at way above market value helped to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability?

[Fat Haggis]

"Whilst the scheme can be blamed for a lot of things, it cant really be blamed for the market price drop, which is always about supply and demand"

Actually mate it can in this case as they encouraged the farmers to up the production and grow a lot more rice than they usually did. They also started to store more instead of selling the hope of raising the world price but other countries started to produce more to cover the loss which meant that what they had done was totally useless as it created a huge glut that dropped the price and they in turn lost their market share because of it all. It was a bad scheme from wo to go, the other problem was the greed at the thought of making extra cash, not just the farmers but all the others involved, land owners, storage owners, farming supplies, they all stuck their fingers in the pie, bad idea, badly set up and bad to the end

Is there any documentation available to read mate to back this up, I've never seen reports from other countries that stated due to the decrease in supply from Thailand, they had to increase their supply and productivity to cover this, as I'd be quite interested to read this.

All countries store rice mate, not just rice, all products with a supply and demand, we even used to do it on the fishing boats when catching lobsters, store them in keeps till the price went up per kilo, it's standard practices really.

There's no doubting the scheme was a disaster, and the trouble with storing such huge quantities then becomes an issue as it is right now, which we don't ear about is the claims that Thailand is back to number one exporter in that yes, it may well be, but what price are they getting, and what is the condition of the rice and from which stock is it coming from?

If you start to flood the market, forcing the prices down it's called dumping, and it's a very big issue indeed, as you know of course when prices tumble, it effects profit margins and market sustainability, and some business go out of business.

It's exactly the same as the Security Industry, there used to be a niche market and daily rates used to be high, but now to be competitive with all the other companies you have to reduce overheads and profit margins to land contracts, and in the end for our market, it comes down to quantity and not quality, and same with the oil and gas industry, for the big players to retain contracts, they have to start trimming overheads otherwise they will lose out to smaller companies who most of the time promise the clients they can deliver, but rarely do so. AS we say in our line of work, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, no different from any other industry that works in supply and demand really.

[JOC]

Throwing good money after bad again??

Thai farmers are not even very good at, what they are doing. (I am being very polite)

The solution:

Establish big state run farms with all the latest in know how, machinery, irrigation technology and whatever is needed to make farming successful!! Employ the "farmers" to work on those big farms and pay them a wage they can live on. Build houses within the farm that the people can rent cheaply. If the farm is successful, pay a yearly bonus to the people working there.

The knowledge is here (Kasetsart), but never reaches the users of the land!!

Never understood the Thai fixation with "you have to owe land", especially if you are not capable of making a living from the land>

Mr P the idea is yours to use!!

[Fat Haggis]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

What was rational about Yingluk's rice scam?

How much of the B700 billion, and rising, lost ended up in the pockets of poor rice farmers?

How much of the B700+ billion loss was steered away from the non-rice growers of Thailand who live nowhere near Bangkok?

Just how is a glut of production and warehouses full of rotting rice bought at way above market value helped to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability?

But where has that money gone? How many people in that scheme have been arrested and assets investigated, it's no small amount to make it disappear like that, there HAS to be a paper/electronic trail leading some where, and it's just way too obvious to say it went to Dubai, did it? as much as I'd love to believe it did, show me 100% proof that it did, otherwise it's nothing more than hearsay, and speculation and hope.

700 Billion baht is a huge amount to not know where it went, I just cant wait for Yingluck to explain where its gone, but the NACC hasn't been able to trace a single Stang, and you just don't shift that amount of money overseas into Foreign accounts without banks themselves being complicit in the transfers.

It stinks to the high heavens, but as far as I know, none of those investigated within the scheme had wealth increase by the billions/millions without explanations.

[halloween]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

What was rational about Yingluk's rice scam?

How much of the B700 billion, and rising, lost ended up in the pockets of poor rice farmers?

How much of the B700+ billion loss was steered away from the non-rice growers of Thailand who live nowhere near Bangkok?

Just how is a glut of production and warehouses full of rotting rice bought at way above market value helped to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability?

But where has that money gone? How many people in that scheme have been arrested and assets investigated, it's no small amount to make it disappear like that, there HAS to be a paper/electronic trail leading some where, and it's just way too obvious to say it went to Dubai, did it? as much as I'd love to believe it did, show me 100% proof that it did, otherwise it's nothing more than hearsay, and speculation and hope.

700 Billion baht is a huge amount to not know where it went, I just cant wait for Yingluck to explain where its gone, but the NACC hasn't been able to trace a single Stang, and you just don't shift that amount of money overseas into Foreign accounts without banks themselves being complicit in the transfers.

It stinks to the high heavens, but as far as I know, none of those investigated within the scheme had wealth increase by the billions/millions without explanations.

I sincerely hope that you are not asking me (again) to substantiate a claim made only in your imagination.

[Somtamnication]

Nothing is more huggable, lovable and kissable than a populist policy created, executed and delivered by the military.

[sfokevin]

How about giving farmers a subsidy if they do not burn thier fields in the spring?... Pay them to invest in cleaner farming practices... Spon a new industry in building and selling farm equipment that can plow under fields...

[retsdon]

Why is assistance to farmers always referred to as a scheme?

Farming is very difficult.

Environmental conditions and market fluctuations make i event more difficult, sometimes impossible to make ends meet.

Without assistance many could not farm.

What would the world eat without farms?

Farming has always been a gamble, assistance guarantees that people can continue to farm, even in bad times.

Assistance to farmers in tough times is insurance....not a scheme.

'There are three certain ways to lose money. The fastest is horse racing. The most fun is women. And the surest is farming.'

The late Lord Astor

[mojorison]

Dirty cheating vote buying... nothing to see here. Move on.

[Ragzilb]

Why is assistance to farmers always referred to as a scheme?

Farming is very difficult.

Environmental conditions and market fluctuations make i event more difficult, sometimes impossible to make ends meet.

Without assistance many could not farm.

What would the world eat without farms?

Farming has always been a gamble, assistance guarantees that people can continue to farm, even in bad times.

Assistance to farmers in tough times is insurance....not a scheme.

Do you even know anything about farming?

Farming is not difficult if you love it and know what you are doing. Enviroment have not changed that much otherwise our forest would not survive it.

a farmer who needs assistance should really look for another job.

[seajae]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

putting your foot in it today arent you, the farmers were never going to get any money and never did or did you miss all the ones that necked themselves over the debts yl caused. The only ones to make money were the ptp support teams, you know, all the big northern land owners, all the big northern farm supplies, all the big northern stage places who all just happened to be reds/ptp/thaksin fans. You need a spare toilet roll there so you can wipe all the stuff dribbling down your chin

Farmers got plenty of money - those whose payments were delayed have Suthep and his military backers to blame.

PTP are no more responsible for the "rice suicides" than the Junta are for the "rubber suicides".

Sorry mate, no toilet paper required.

you really need to check your facts mate, the farmers were owed money from months before suthep started his crap, yl was supposed to set the money up for them before she resigned, she didnt because they didnt have it simple, they were relying on using the money from the 3 trillion baht loan to pay them because they had blown it. Maybe if you were able to read what has actually been written about it all and shown to be correct you would keep dribbling you know what but simply trying to spin totally new made up facts doesnt cut it. Try looking it all up before stumbling even further

[seajae]

"Whilst the scheme can be blamed for a lot of things, it cant really be blamed for the market price drop, which is always about supply and demand"

Actually mate it can in this case as they encouraged the farmers to up the production and grow a lot more rice than they usually did. They also started to store more instead of selling the hope of raising the world price but other countries started to produce more to cover the loss which meant that what they had done was totally useless as it created a huge glut that dropped the price and they in turn lost their market share because of it all. It was a bad scheme from wo to go, the other problem was the greed at the thought of making extra cash, not just the farmers but all the others involved, land owners, storage owners, farming supplies, they all stuck their fingers in the pie, bad idea, badly set up and bad to the end

Is there any documentation available to read mate to back this up, I've never seen reports from other countries that stated due to the decrease in supply from Thailand, they had to increase their supply and productivity to cover this, as I'd be quite interested to read this.

All countries store rice mate, not just rice, all products with a supply and demand, we even used to do it on the fishing boats when catching lobsters, store them in keeps till the price went up per kilo, it's standard practices really.

There's no doubting the scheme was a disaster, and the trouble with storing such huge quantities then becomes an issue as it is right now, which we don't ear about is the claims that Thailand is back to number one exporter in that yes, it may well be, but what price are they getting, and what is the condition of the rice and from which stock is it coming from?

If you start to flood the market, forcing the prices down it's called dumping, and it's a very big issue indeed, as you know of course when prices tumble, it effects profit margins and market sustainability, and some business go out of business.

It's exactly the same as the Security Industry, there used to be a niche market and daily rates used to be high, but now to be competitive with all the other companies you have to reduce overheads and profit margins to land contracts, and in the end for our market, it comes down to quantity and not quality, and same with the oil and gas industry, for the big players to retain contracts, they have to start trimming overheads otherwise they will lose out to smaller companies who most of the time promise the clients they can deliver, but rarely do so. AS we say in our line of work, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, no different from any other industry that works in supply and demand really.

it was in all the news last year if you want to look it up, vietnam increased their production markedly to cover for Thailand(india too) and also took their selling place. All I have done is stated what happened, if you want to search you will find it all there in black and white, maybe you were on service at the time but it did happen. Thailand were number 1 in the world before they stopped selling and started storing to push up prices, they were too silly to realize others would take their place and lost out big time then when they tried to start selling again their was a glut and prices dropped. Like I said, all you need do is look it up.

[Srikcir]

Wow, if only the government had some sort of policy to help the rice farmers, perhaps they could call it a "rice scheme" and the purpose of the "rice scheme" would be to funnel government expenditure away from the Bangkok fatcats and into the pockets of the poverty stricken rural rice farmers who could then use those funds to modernise their machinery and farming techniques to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability - even if the "rice scheme" were to initially operate at a loss, the long term gains of lifting millions out of poverty and increasing Thailand's international competitiveness would pay off handsomely by generating huge economic and social dividends and eliminating the need for the government to constantly bail out the industry. If only Thailand had leaders with such foresight. How we rational souls miss you Yingluck.

What was rational about Yingluk's rice scam?

How much of the B700 billion, and rising, lost ended up in the pockets of poor rice farmers?

How much of the B700+ billion loss was steered away from the non-rice growers of Thailand who live nowhere near Bangkok?

Just how is a glut of production and warehouses full of rotting rice bought at way above market value helped to increase the industries efficiencies and profitability?

But where has that money gone? How many people in that scheme have been arrested and assets investigated, it's no small amount to make it disappear like that, there HAS to be a paper/electronic trail leading some where, and it's just way too obvious to say it went to Dubai, did it? as much as I'd love to believe it did, show me 100% proof that it did, otherwise it's nothing more than hearsay, and speculation and hope.

700 Billion baht is a huge amount to not know where it went, I just cant wait for Yingluck to explain where its gone, but the NACC hasn't been able to trace a single Stang, and you just don't shift that amount of money overseas into Foreign accounts without banks themselves being complicit in the transfers.

It stinks to the high heavens, but as far as I know, none of those investigated within the scheme had wealth increase by the billions/millions without explanations.

"But where has that money gone?"

This has been often asked and the answer is NOWHERE under Yingluck.

If I buy a bag of rice from you at 100 baht HIGHER than market price, then resell the rice at market rice, 100 baht is lost.

The Yingluck rice pledge program was intended to pay up to 2x current market price, stockpile the rice to force market prices to or beyond the government purchase price, thus recouping the government outlays that could be pay then to the farmers. Yingluck didn't actually pay the farmers to stockpile the rice (except for initial pledges made in early 2013 that was paid from rice sales), only made a pledges to pay them a set price when the rice was sold.

But foreign rice competitors continued to dump cheap rice on the market and actually caused a decrease in rice market prices. Public pressure largley from the PDRC built against Yingluck to take care of the rice farmers financial plight. But by that time the government was in caretaker status due to dissolution of the parliament. That meant the normal avenue available to the governent, issuance of treasury bonds to raise funds, could not occur without approval from the Electtion Committee as per the 2007 Constitution. The EC refused. Yingluck then went to banks who initially said they would lend the government funds to pay the farmers but pressure from the PDRC anti-government protesters forced the banks to refuse.

After the military coup in May 2014 and abolishment of the Constitution, one of the Junta's first acts was to ORDER the sale of treasury bonds to generate funds to pay the farmers at Yingluck's rice pledge prices. That's where the Bt700 billion went. It was paid out to the rice farmers and the Junta has committed the government to pay back the treasury bonds over the next ten years from Thai tax collections.

Ironically, the Junta has now done a similar program with rubber farmers. it is buying and stockpiling rubber latex at higher than market prices. It then hopes as did Yingluck to put pressure on the world supply to increase prices above the government paid prices.

[Fat Haggis]

"Whilst the scheme can be blamed for a lot of things, it cant really be blamed for the market price drop, which is always about supply and demand"

Actually mate it can in this case as they encouraged the farmers to up the production and grow a lot more rice than they usually did. They also started to store more instead of selling the hope of raising the world price but other countries started to produce more to cover the loss which meant that what they had done was totally useless as it created a huge glut that dropped the price and they in turn lost their market share because of it all. It was a bad scheme from wo to go, the other problem was the greed at the thought of making extra cash, not just the farmers but all the others involved, land owners, storage owners, farming supplies, they all stuck their fingers in the pie, bad idea, badly set up and bad to the end

Is there any documentation available to read mate to back this up, I've never seen reports from other countries that stated due to the decrease in supply from Thailand, they had to increase their supply and productivity to cover this, as I'd be quite interested to read this.

All countries store rice mate, not just rice, all products with a supply and demand, we even used to do it on the fishing boats when catching lobsters, store them in keeps till the price went up per kilo, it's standard practices really.

There's no doubting the scheme was a disaster, and the trouble with storing such huge quantities then becomes an issue as it is right now, which we don't ear about is the claims that Thailand is back to number one exporter in that yes, it may well be, but what price are they getting, and what is the condition of the rice and from which stock is it coming from?

If you start to flood the market, forcing the prices down it's called dumping, and it's a very big issue indeed, as you know of course when prices tumble, it effects profit margins and market sustainability, and some business go out of business.

It's exactly the same as the Security Industry, there used to be a niche market and daily rates used to be high, but now to be competitive with all the other companies you have to reduce overheads and profit margins to land contracts, and in the end for our market, it comes down to quantity and not quality, and same with the oil and gas industry, for the big players to retain contracts, they have to start trimming overheads otherwise they will lose out to smaller companies who most of the time promise the clients they can deliver, but rarely do so. AS we say in our line of work, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, no different from any other industry that works in supply and demand really.

it was in all the news last year if you want to look it up, vietnam increased their production markedly to cover for Thailand(india too) and also took their selling place. All I have done is stated what happened, if you want to search you will find it all there in black and white, maybe you were on service at the time but it did happen. Thailand were number 1 in the world before they stopped selling and started storing to push up prices, they were too silly to realize others would take their place and lost out big time then when they tried to start selling again their was a glut and prices dropped. Like I said, all you need do is look it up.

Mate, I've searched and can't find anything to back up what you've stated, what I have found however is documents from the FAO Rice Market Monitor which if I'm reading those correctly contradicts what you've said was reported. I have read the past 3 years reports and none of them states that due to a decrease in Thailands production, others have had to increase.

I've just started reading a 400 page report on the Rice crisis of 2008, and how they were looking to avoid that again, when the prices were at an all time high.

Sorry mate, but I think you're wrong about The scheme having had an impact on the global market in 2013 and especially in 2014, many other factors in other rice growing countries also attributed to the continuing downward price of rice, and lower overall production levels.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/as201e/as201e.pdf That's from November 2013

http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4294e.pdf That's from December 2014

I'll throw this question out to the open forum, did the farmers ever receive payments from the scheme at all since its inception?