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The festive season is already here with the New Year just a week away and many office workers anxiously anticipating their year-end bonus. Even government officials are to get a bonus – thanks to the extraordinary generosity of the government and despite the fact that it is broke.
But not our farmers, especially those who have already "pledged" their crops with the millers under the government’s "Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai acts" rice buying scheme.
Many of them have yet to receive payments from the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives for rice "pledged" back in October – the beginning of the 2013-14 harvest season.
The truth is that the bank which is the main and only sponsor of the rice pledging scheme has run out of cash to pay the farmers. In short, it is broke.
The government's coffers are empty, and farmers are waiting for their promised payment for already pledged crops, says Veera. (Bangkok Post file pic)
Those farmers who cannot wait for the bank to replenish its depleted cash flow have simply gone to the wealthy millers and pawned their bai prathuan, the receipt issued by the bank after having received the rice from farmers, and asked for cash in advance.
But millers are not philanthropists. They are businessmen – the blood-sucking sort. It was reliably reported that for every tonne of paddy, for which farmers could get up to 15,000 baht from the government under the scheme (depending on moisture content), the millers would advance only 8,000 baht, charging the needy farmers about 7,000 baht.
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