Thailand's caretaker government seeks quick money to repay farmers

BANGKOK, February 13 (TNA) - In a bid to quickly raise money for local farmers who have waited for about five months for payment of rice they pledged under the official rice-pledging scheme, the Thai Ministry of Commerce holds another bidding contest to find buyers of rice stocks. The Commerce Ministry started receiving tenders on Wednesday morning, with three contenders first placing their bids, and the ministry was waiting until Wednesday afternoon, at 4pm. In the bidding contest, the Ministry of Commerce is trying to sell about 467,000 tonnes of rice collected from 2011 to 2013 and it is scheduled to open bid envelopes on Thursday, while planing to also sell 220,000 more tonnes of pledged rice through the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand (AFET). From the beginning of the rice-pledging scheme to the end of January 2014, the Thai Ministry of Commerce had staged 12 bidding contests to release the government's rice stocks and it had already sold about 2.2 million tonnes of rice. Last month, the Ministry of Commerce held bidding contests to sell part of rice stocks through the AFET and the activities involved nearly 150,000 tonnes of rice, with proceeds of about 180 billion baht having sent to the Ministry of Finance. Meanwhile, protesting farmers canceled their plan to lay siege to government warehouses where pledged rice are kept, after the Lawyers Council of Thailand warned them that the movement is illegal and tantamount to trespass and damage of public property. However, Rawee Rungruang, a representative of farmers in the Thai West, led farmers to file their complaints with the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). In another development, farmers from 15 Thai provinces planned their protest against Suthep Thaugsuban, secretary-general of the anti-government People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), for blocking the caretaker government from borrowing from banks to pay for their pledged rice.(TNA)