Doesn't care who's put in charge of rice issues
PHUSADEE ARUNMAS & CHATRUDEE THEPARAT
Commerce Minister Mingkwan Sangsuwan said yesterday he would not resign from the cabinet despite responsibility for shoring up rice prices being shifted from his ministry.
Mr Mingkwan said he was neither saddened nor humiliated and added he did not care who was going to be in charge of rice issues as long as the benefits went to farmers.
"I just want farmers to be able to sell their paddy at 14,000 baht per tonne. That would make me happy enough," he said.
His remarks came after the government rejected his plan to enter a bidding contest with other countries to sell 600,000 tonnes of rice to the Philippines in a government-to-government deal.
Earlier, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej ordered the Finance Ministry to oversee the rice mortgage scheme in a decision made when he was on a visit to Peru.
The government also suspended Mr Mingkwan's project to sell cheap rice to domestic consumers.
The Philippines decided on June 13 to buy the grain from Vietnam instead.
Mr Mingkwan said that he did not understand why Thailand had missed the opportunity to sell the grain to the Philippines, which is the world's biggest importer of rice.
A source at the Commerce Ministry said that Mr Mingkwan had tabled the proposal to bid for the rice tender to the Philippines for the cabinet to approve in a meeting on June 10 but it was rejected.
Another source at a rice trading firm noted that Thailand's withdrawal from the bid was related to Manila's condition that it would buy Thai rice from only three major suppliers.
That made some cabinet members believe it was not appropriate for the government to purchase 600,000 tonnes of rice stock from only some exporters, the source said.
The conditions were probably the reason leading to the decision by Mr Samak to withdraw Thailand from the bid, the source added.
In the past, the commerce minister was authorised to approve the government's bidding for government-to-government rice trading contracts.
But under this government, this authority has surprisingly been reassigned to the prime minister, according to the source.
Rice has long been a political commodity. Experienced politicians always managed to find ways to earn some money for their political parties via the rice market as well as boosting their popularity among farmers.
The source said Mr Mingkwan might be blind to the earnings opportunities from the rice market and that could have upset veteran politicians from the People Power party (PPP).
Government-to-government rice trading contracts and rice mortgage schemes have always involved budgets of several billion baht.
In the past some profits went into the pockets of corrupt people linked to politicians.
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