Rice pledging scheme to be evaluated
The subcommittee overseeing the government's rice pledge revolving fund will soon convene to evaluate the fund's status, said Luck Wajananawat, president of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC).
He said that the subcommittee would also discuss the Commerce Ministry’s plans to pay back the Bt500 billion loan it borrowed from BAAC to run the pledging scheme. Most of those funds had now been spent on the scheme, he noted.
Luck said that if the government failed to meet the target for releasing rice from the stockpile – money that it needed to pay back BAAC – it might have to look at other ways to increase funds for the rice pledging project.
The government allocated Bt500 billion for the project, of which Bt410 billion was a loan from the BAAC, while the rest was lent to the government from the bank’s own coffers. The ministry had already paid Bt110 billion of the total Bt220 billion to be repaid this year. Luck said that in effect, the government had to release stockpiled rice so it could make enough money to repay the fund. This would, in turn, enable the BAAC to continue the pledging scheme for the next crop season. Of the total Bt110 billion returned to the bank, Bt85 billion is for BAAC’s main crop pledge last year and the rest for the main crop of 2011.
Over the past few months, the BAAC has used Bt21.5 billion of the amount returned, to pledge a second crop for 2012/2103, totalling 1.34 million tonnes of rice from 17,000 rice farmers. The bank expects that seven million tonnes from the second rice crop will be included in the scheme. The pledging process for the second crop will end on September 15. Currently the fund could afford the pledge for the second crop, Luck said.
He said the subcommittee would also discuss whether the strong baht and the decline in the price of rice on the global market would affect the government’s decision to release rice from the stockpile.
