Thai Farmers Demand Rice Payments

Feb. 6, 2014 10:31 a.m. ET

During a rally on the outskirts of Bangkok Thursday, farmers demanded the Yingluck administration resolve delays in payment from the rice pledging scheme. Reuters

BANGKOK—Hundreds of farmers from Thailand’s southwestern provinces went to the Commerce Ministry to demand payment for the rice they sold to the state under Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s rice-subsidy program.

Some farmers on Thursday planned to sleep overnight inside mosquito netting at the ministry compounds and threatened to get other farmers to besiege the ministry in the next three days unless they are paid.
Many farmers, whose votes helped Ms. Yingluck’s Pheu Thai Party win a landslide in the 2011 elections, said they haven’t been paid in months. Their growing discontent has threatened to erode Ms. Yingluck’s longtime support base at a time when her opponents have mounted legal pressures to remove her from office, following months of protests in the capital.
Somkid Yimyam, 55 years old, who traveled from Phetchaburi province, 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Bangkok, said she is owed 350,000 baht ($10,700) for the paddy she sold to the state four months ago.
“I have no money. I have nothing to eat but the vegetables my family grows around our house,” she said.
Ms. Yingluck’s government has been buying rice from local farmers at above-market rates since October 2011 to boost incomes in rural Thailand. But her populist policy has left her government with about 18 million tons of rice—about twice the rice shipments in a normal year—and some $20 billion to pay. Rice prices have continued to decline on a surge in global supply, making it difficult for the Thai government to sell without suffering losses.
Antigovernment protesters, who have staged rallies over the past three months to try to force Ms. Yingluck to resign, took the opportunity on Thursday to persuade farmers to switch their alliance. A spokesman for the protest movement said the group would gather in the capital’s main business area Friday to raise funds to support the farmers’ rallies. Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban also threatened to seize a state rice warehouse in a bid to sell rice to help farmers.
Farmer protests have spread since the government missed its promised deadline to pay them at the end of January. Ms. Yingluck is under investigation by Thailand’s antigraft agency for her management of the rice subsidy, which incurred at least $4 billion in losses in the subsidy’s first year. She said she was ready to defend herself.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s commercial banks have declined to lend the Finance Ministry $4 billion to pay the farmers because of legal concerns and opposition by employees and unions.
The Commerce Ministry said it would hold a tender to sell 467,000 metric tons of rice next week after China scrapped a deal to purchase 1.2 million tons of rice this week following an investigation by Thailand’s anticorruption agency into alleged fraud in prior rice sales between other Chinese firms and the Thai government. The cancellation dealt a blow to the Thai government’s attempts to generate cash to pay farmers.
Mr. Suthep and his allies disrupted Sunday’s general election. Many who wanted to vote were stymied by padlocked voting stations that hadn’t received ballot papers because of the disruption campaign. This prompted officials to call off voting in parts of Bangkok and nine southern provinces, leaving the outcome inconclusive.
Ms. Yingluck has blamed the farmers’ grievances on the demonstrators, who forced her to dissolve the lower house in December that subsequently reduced her government’s authority to make plans and decisions. “The government sincerely cares about the farmers and we aren’t being nonchalant about the farmer’s plight,” she said in a posting Thursday on her official Facebook account.
Write to Warangkana Chomchuen at warangkana.chomchuen@wsj.com

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