Former TDRI president testifies against Yingluck
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The Yingluck Shinawatra government’s rice-pledging scheme went against the main objective of a state subsidy programme that had been implemented for three decades by offering to “buy every grain of rice,” the Supreme Court was told Friday.
Nipon Poapongsakorn, former president of Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), said in his testimony before the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Political Office Holders that the scheme’s original goal was to help poor small-time rice farmers.
He added that past governments often offered to buy rice from farmers at a price lower than the market’s, but that Yingluck’s government bought rice higher than the market price from all groups of farmers.
According to Nipon, the subsidy set aside for the rice-pledging scheme during the Yingluck government’s tenure was higher than the amount allowed by the World Trade Organisation.
He was speaking during the first court hearing of a case against Yingluck, who is accused of negligence and dereliction of duty for failing to prevent irregularities involving her government’s rice scheme.
