Former DPM Kittirat defends rice pledging and first car programmes

[tajtom]

A degenerate and unqualified amature that had no place even being emplolyed let alone and Vice PM God help them

[aimbc]

"Regarding the 500 billion baht in damages caused by the scheme, Mr Kittirat defended that the amount was well within the five percent ceiling of the annual budget"

Absolutely amazing. His defence against the massive corruption is that it was taken from an approved budget. I think that corruption is so normal for him and the other dirty cronies, it doesn't even occur to him it should have been given to the farmers.

I have nothing but contempt for these thieves and liars. They should be in jail for abuse of power after the amnesty disgrace. The problem is, I expect the next lot will only be marginally better.

What massive corruption?

With 25,000+ posts to your name you obvisly spend too much time writing and not enough reading. Whilst massive corruption has not yet been proven in court for the fake G2G deals a few small fry have been convicted of buying the rice from the warehouses at about 8,000 Baht a ton and then selling it back at 15,000 a ton. It is only a matter of time before the big players do get convicted.

You should also notice that the red supporters are not stupid enough to try and support this known liar.

The number touted on that is 20bn. Let's see. Although elsewhere it is mentioned in another thread 65,000 tonnes. Which out of 75,000,000 tonnes is piffling.

There was corruption but the 500bn is almost entirely accounted in the loss of the scheme not corruption.

It would have worst of the general public did not come out and protest. One little corruption is as good as one big corruption. How can any one justify that it was just a little corruption and its supposed to be OK? What country are you from?

[Thai at Heart]

"Regarding the 500 billion baht in damages caused by the scheme, Mr Kittirat defended that the amount was well within the five percent ceiling of the annual budget"

Absolutely amazing. His defence against the massive corruption is that it was taken from an approved budget. I think that corruption is so normal for him and the other dirty cronies, it doesn't even occur to him it should have been given to the farmers.

I have nothing but contempt for these thieves and liars. They should be in jail for abuse of power after the amnesty disgrace. The problem is, I expect the next lot will only be marginally better.

What massive corruption?

With 25,000+ posts to your name you obvisly spend too much time writing and not enough reading. Whilst massive corruption has not yet been proven in court for the fake G2G deals a few small fry have been convicted of buying the rice from the warehouses at about 8,000 Baht a ton and then selling it back at 15,000 a ton. It is only a matter of time before the big players do get convicted.

You should also notice that the red supporters are not stupid enough to try and support this known liar.

The number touted on that is 20bn. Let's see. Although elsewhere it is mentioned in another thread 65,000 tonnes. Which out of 75,000,000 tonnes is piffling.

There was corruption but the 500bn is almost entirely accounted in the loss of the scheme not corruption.

It would have worst of the general public did not come out and protest. One little corruption is as good as one big corruption. How can any one justify that it was just a little corruption and its supposed to be OK? What country are you from?

No, someone said there was massive corruption in the 500bn. As yet the prosecuted corruption is a fraction of that figure.

So where is this massive corruption, because standard on govt spending would be 25%.

So is someone claiming there is 100bn fraud? No. There isn't a system like this in the world with some corruption, it's impossible not to be. But what I can't see in this system is a persistent graft endemic in the system.

There was opportunistic theft and a couple of dodgy deals. None of which shows massive corruption which systematically enriched the Ptp bunch.

This is my point. Screaming massive corruption when there wasn't any is disengenuous in comparison with the reality of the system.

[aimbc]

"Regarding the 500 billion baht in damages caused by the scheme, Mr Kittirat defended that the amount was well within the five percent ceiling of the annual budget"

Absolutely amazing. His defence against the massive corruption is that it was taken from an approved budget. I think that corruption is so normal for him and the other dirty cronies, it doesn't even occur to him it should have been given to the farmers.

I have nothing but contempt for these thieves and liars. They should be in jail for abuse of power after the amnesty disgrace. The problem is, I expect the next lot will only be marginally better.

What massive corruption?

With 25,000+ posts to your name you obvisly spend too much time writing and not enough reading. Whilst massive corruption has not yet been proven in court for the fake G2G deals a few small fry have been convicted of buying the rice from the warehouses at about 8,000 Baht a ton and then selling it back at 15,000 a ton. It is only a matter of time before the big players do get convicted.

You should also notice that the red supporters are not stupid enough to try and support this known liar.

The number touted on that is 20bn. Let's see. Although elsewhere it is mentioned in another thread 65,000 tonnes. Which out of 75,000,000 tonnes is piffling.

There was corruption but the 500bn is almost entirely accounted in the loss of the scheme not corruption.

It would have worst of the general public did not come out and protest. One little corruption is as good as one big corruption. How can any one justify that it was just a little corruption and its supposed to be OK? What country are you from?

No, someone said there was massive corruption in the 500bn. As yet the prosecuted corruption is a fraction of that figure.

So where is this massive corruption, because standard on govt spending would be 25%.

So is someone claiming there is 100bn fraud? No. There isn't a system like this in the world with some corruption, it's impossible not to be. But what I can't see in this system is a persistent graft endemic in the system.

There was opportunistic theft and a couple of dodgy deals. None of which shows massive corruption which systematically enriched the Ptp bunch.

This is my point. Screaming massive corruption when there wasn't any is disengenuous in comparison with the reality of the system.

Ok, it was prevented. A small one without transparency will evolve into a bigger one. Remember the g2g deal was one of reason that was presented to get additional funding for the program. Which they got. And would have gotten more of the off budget transportation budget passed. Corruption of just a political term for robbery or theft. What ever you like to call it. And that is the bottom line. It seems like when you call it corruption it carries less penalty. What ever about of the total percentage of the value is irrelevant in as criminal action.

It's like saying if someone stole from lotus 10,000 baht with of merchandise from the store that has 100 millions of baht in inventory is less severe than stealing 10,000 baht from a store that has only one million baht of inventory because it's ratio is smaller. That is what corrupt officials do. Make a large project and syphon out 1%. That is enough to retire with. Because they know people will believe in statistic and ratio not the amount. Yes it's is fair to say it's massive.

[Thai at Heart]

Well, anyone running this type of scheme would try to minimis the corruption as best they can, knowing there would be some.

My point was to someone up teh top who said "everyone knows there was massive corruption". I asked, what Massive corruption. Massive corruption is not syphoning 60,000 tonnes of rice out of a crop of 18,000,000 or moving stuff around and changing points of origin. That stuff existed under every rice scheme there has ever been in Thailand. People talk as though this scheme was dirty and all the others before were clean. As though this last one contained some measure of corruption on a scale never seen before in rice schemes in Thailand.

Well go and google the reports people its the same as it ever was. the same tricks, the same sleight of hand.

So I disagree that everyone knows there was MASSIVE corruption, because now I am being told it is the absolute figure that makes the measure of MASSIVENESS. Right ho.

So can we agree that the 500bn was a loss and there was some measure of corruption, or is it going to be continually stated 500bn, everyone knows there was massive corruption. Because as yet, I can't see that there was, it is a financial loss, with some cases of corruption that have been prosecuted. None of which represent a big wedge of the 500bn. That is it the issue. The loss is not dominated by corruption, but by financial losses incurred through the operation of the scheme.

[aimbc]

Yes, I agree that number 500 billion is an estimate. As there are no real figures. Is it massive, yes it is. There are probably solid numbers that we will never see. Such as the warehouse charges for storing the rice. We don't even know how much that is. And we will never know how much of it went to the politicians for securing the contract to store the rice. What about the millers and middle men. Buying the rice from the little guy for less and charging the government for the full amount. So many other ways. If you add that to the stolen rice and cheating the hard working farmers and many others, it add up quite high. And besides corruption in terms of a way in which it was used to buy votes at the expense of tax payers.

I don't come from a rich family, so to its massive when 60,000 tons of rice is missing. If you have to put a monetary amount to it. What is qualifies for massive? The massive project such as this was designed with one thing in mind, making it harder to trace the money. I don't really know of any government project that was budgeted for one agricultural subsidy that was at this massive scale.

According to this article http://m.deltafarmpress.com/rice/rice-subsidy-program-cost-thailand-27-billion. USA spend only $1.53 billion per year and also there is a limitation on wto for rice trade, which I don't know about what Thailand limit is, but they should have only supported only a certain cap. So it was designed for corruption in the first place. It's main purpose was to win votes and not to help farmers or the people of Thailand. But since we have to put the price on the lost, it's the rice that can not be sold. Simply, Massive project to cover up a massive corruption.

[billd766]

Yes, I agree that number 500 billion is an estimate. As there are no real figures. Is it massive, yes it is. There are probably solid numbers that we will never see. Such as the warehouse charges for storing the rice. We don't even know how much that is. And we will never know how much of it went to the politicians for securing the contract to store the rice. What about the millers and middle men. Buying the rice from the little guy for less and charging the government for the full amount. So many other ways. If you add that to the stolen rice and cheating the hard working farmers and many others, it add up quite high. And besides corruption in terms of a way in which it was used to buy votes at the expense of tax payers.

I don't come from a rich family, so to its massive when 60,000 tons of rice is missing. If you have to put a monetary amount to it. What is qualifies for massive? The massive project such as this was designed with one thing in mind, making it harder to trace the money. I don't really know of any government project that was budgeted for one agricultural subsidy that was at this massive scale.

According to this article http://m.deltafarmpress.com/rice/rice-subsidy-program-cost-thailand-27-billion. USA spend only $1.53 billion per year and also there is a limitation on wto for rice trade, which I don't know about what Thailand limit is, but they should have only supported only a certain cap. So it was designed for corruption in the first place. It's main purpose was to win votes and not to help farmers or the people of Thailand. But since we have to put the price on the lost, it's the rice that can not be sold. Simply, Massive project to cover up a massive corruption.

Well 60,000 tonnes bought at 15,000 baht per tonne is 900,000,000 baht on its own. If you add say 10,000 baht per tonne for transportation costs that would be a further 600,000,000 baht which would total 1.500,000,000 but that would assume that the 60,000 tonnes was bought, transported, stored AND sold in the same month.

What if the 60,000 tonnes storage cost was 5,000 baht per ton per month? That would cost an extra 300,000,000 for every month of storage. Please note that the 5,000 baht per ton per month is merely a hypothetical figure for example only.

Nobody really knows the true cost as the figures have never been released, but it won't be cheap.