You will be held responsible for huge loss, Pridiyathorn warns ministers

"I believe that those who have pushed for the rice mortgage scheme are heavyweights within the Pheu Thai Party. Since they can't hold political office, they are using the two ministers as scapegoats for the rice mortgage scheme that quotes the mortgaged rice price at unrealistically high levels," said Pridiyathorn to a group of reporters.

"I am confident that the two ministers have a conscience of good and bad. I do hope that my comments will help you see it more clearly that the big shots within the party are using you to pursue a policy that would create damage to the country."

A banker by career, the outspoken Pridiyathorn served as deputy commerce minister during the Anand government. He was governor of the Bank of Thailand during the Thaksin government. After the 2006 military coup, Pridiyathorn was appointed as deputy prime minister and finance minister in the Surayud government.

The rice mortgage scheme is a key populist policy of the Yingluck government, setting out to guarantee farmers Bt20,000 per tonne for jasmine paddy and Bt15,000 per tonne for white rice.

Although the scheme does not involve the state budget directly, it involves the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, amounting to more than Bt400 billion. The scheme will be launched from October 7 till February 29, 2012. 

The government plans to extend it for another month to the end of March next year.

Pridiyathorn also sent a direct message to Thirachai, saying that as chairman of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives he should be aware of the unrealistically high prices of the mortgaged scheme and the gigantic volume of paddy that involves. This scheme, Pridiyathorn said, was likely to result in a loss to the government of Bt250 billion. The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives will eventually have to seek compensation from the government to offset the Bt250 billion loss from its involvement in the mortgage scheme.

Pridiyathorn said Thirachai would be vulnerable to criminal charges later if the rice mortgage scheme created losses to the state budget because he was aware the scheme would suffer losses in the first place. "I would like to specifically warn him about this (potential criminal charge)," he said.

He urged the government to ignore the rice mortgage subsidy and to use other means and appropriate prices to avoid a huge loss. It should also ensure that farmers really gain.

Pridiyathorn stressed that he had suffered while closely monitoring the programme and studying 'immoral politicians' pushing a project that would eventually create the country's biggest ever loss. The price mortgage policy would create more corruption when the government had to manage a huge stockpile - a lesson they had learnt many times.