Ministers scramble for ways to please rubber growers
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Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong and related ministers on Saturday unveiled the measures to help rubber growers.
The measures are subjected to the Cabinet's approval at the meeting on Tuesday.
In the Prime Minister's weekly TV programme, Kittiratt said that it is difficult that rubber prices would be as good as in the past few years. He added that under the government's agricultural zoning policy, farmers are encouraged to grow other crops like sugar cane and palm oil on their rubber plantation fields. It is the Energy Ministry's policy to buy more palm oil, he said, to increase the biodiesel content in conventional diesel from 5 per cent at present to 7 per cent.
He said that the government would provide financial assistance to finance the cutting of old rubber trees.
Rubber farmers have vowed to block all main highways through the South next week if the government fails to prop up the sagging prices.
The growers have been blocking the key Asian Highway in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, 650 kilometres south of Bangkok, for the past nine days, as well as disrupting rail and road service to the south and Malaysia.
