It’s coming.
The Commerce Ministry will seek Cabinet approval to repackage some of its 2.1 million tonnes of rice sitting in warehouses into five-kilo bags for sale to consumers after the domestic price of jasmine rice surged to over Bt30,000 per tonne.
“Local rice prices now are quite high. The ministry has already prepared measures to tackle the problem. However, we don’t want to implement any that interfere in the market mechanism,” Commerce Minister Mingkwan Sangsuwan said last week.
He declined to reveal how much stock would be released and how much the packed rice would sell for at retail. (Nation)
How can we describe this operation ? Market manipulation. Nothing less, nothing more. What is the usual outcome of such policy ? Failure.
First : it sends a very bad message to the market. Basically : you foreigners are stupid enough to buy rice at very high price, but us in Thailand we need lower prices.
Second : it’s going to help people, sure, but temporarily, and meanwhile it’s a fabulous opportunity for scams and business !
We can be sure that a lot, and I mean A LOT, of those special “bags-to-help-poor-people” are going to be… resold to make a profit, quickly !
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