Govt insists rice storage sufficient
In spite of the high quantity of rice entering the government's pledging project, the Commerce Ministry yesterday insisted it had enough warehouse space to cope with the stockpile.
Wiboonlasana Ruamraksa, director-general of the ministry’s Internal Trade Department, said about 15 million tonnes of paddy, equivalent to 7 million tonnes of milled rice, had entered the pledging project to date.
Despite the high volume, the government is confident that it will have enough space to stock rice under the pledging measure, she said.
At present, 479 warehouses have joined the pledging project. They should be able to stock 7.5 million to 7.6 million tonnes of rice. The government has also continued to release rice from stockpiles to clear more space for incoming stocks.
More privately owned warehouses are also expected to join the pledging scheme.
According to ministry data as of April 21, 13.64 million tonnes of paddy rice from the main harvest season had been pledged. About 1.6 million tonnes of paddy from the second crop have also entered the project.
However, the ministry has admitted that there has been some delay in payment to farmers pledging rice under the project. This was due to government officials ensuring that there was no cheating of the programme by non-participant farmers or rice from neighbouring countries, it says.
A rice grower in Pathum Thani said many farmers in his province and Nakhon Nayok had not yet received payment from the government. Officials did not provide any explanation for the delay. The source said he believed that the government might be facing a financial liquidity problem.
The farmer said he and other growers wanted to see some income soon as they had debts to pay from their rice operations in the past season and needed money to prepare for the new crop.
Meanwhile, the government spent Bt22.48 billion on cassava pledging between December 1 and March 31. A total of 10 million tonnes of cassava has been pledged.
