Why put whole country at risk for rice scheme?

And you, dear reader, should be just as concerned. A private firm is no safer than its country, and if Thailand’s rating is reduced, the rating of its entire private sector will fall, pushing up costs that must be passed onto consumers, and making us less competitive in the world market.

The government insists that the rice scheme must stay because that’s what the Pheu Thai Party promised at election time. But Yingluck should heed Abraham Lincoln’s words: “Bad promises are better broken than kept.” She says the scheme’s goal is to help farmers – but the Thailand Development Research Institute found that fully 70 per cent of the money spent goes to rich farmers, politicians, millers and so on – not to farmers who are poor. Now that the Bank for Agriculture and Agriculture Cooperatives is reaching its credit limit to cover the losses, it’s being ordered to issue bonds so that you and I can cover the shortfall. But a scheme that can only make massive losses will drag the bank’s credit rating down, and since this is a state bank, the country’s sovereign rating will drop also, pushing up borrowing costs for all of us.

Yingluck should use other, far more effective ways to help farmers, such as basing pay-outs on land tilled (as with rubber subsidies), or giving higher-yielding seeds in crops best suited to each region. Yingluck should not be like Walt Kelly’s cartoon character Pogo, who said, “Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.”

Burin Kantabutra

Bangkok