Thailand's Public Warehouse Organization (PWO) and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) will establish more rice mortgage centers countrywide to facilitate farmers, the state-run Thai News Agency reported on Monday.
Senior officials of the PWO on Monday met Yanyong Puangraj, director-general of Internal Trade Department, to assess the government-sponsored rice-pledging program, which began nationwide Sunday aiming to shore up falling paddy prices and containing protests by farmers.
However, only six centers were established in a total of five provinces and only 60 farmers mortgaged rice amounting 1,000 tons in the program on Sunday. Therefore, the government plans to open more centers to meet the expectation of buying several million tons of paddy rice from farmers, the report said.
Earlier, the government expects that about 70 millers would join the scheme this week and buy up to 2.5 million tons of paddy rice from farmers.
The government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej on June 4 announced the allocation of 25 billion baht (about 782 million U.S. dollars for the Finance Ministry's BAAC to buy up to 2.5 million tons of paddy rice from farmers at the guaranteed price of 14,000 baht (438 U.S. dollars) per ton, depending on the moisture content.
Source: Xinhua
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