PREEYANAT PHANAYANGGOOR & YUWADEE TUNYASIRI

Two days after Thai Rak Thai's landslide victory, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday started work on his promise to eradicate poverty by calling for an urgent meeting on the special-purpose vehicle (SPV) to help farmers.

Torphong Chaiyasarn, deputy government spokesman, said Mr Thaksin hurriedly called the SPV meeting yesterday immediately after the weekly cabinet meeting which was very short as he wanted to begin work on the project immediately.

He quoted the premier as saying he had plenty of energy left after the general election so he wanted to see the SPV become a reality as soon as possible.

The SPV is a special company to be set up by the government to provide comprehensive assistance to farmers, including business opportunities and to help them market their goods.

It would deal more with the supply side of farm commodities, and thus it was hoped to be able to control their price fluctuations.

The SPV would "lend" palm trees, rubber and oxen out to farmers and it would eventually be able to gain a share of the profits from their sale.

Mr Thaksin said the SPV would be another way to bring farmers closer to being able to obtain formal financial resources, providing easier access to loans for long-term investment.

The prime minster said the SPV scheme would start off with rubber and sugar cane, the latter of which is the raw material in the production of ethanol.

He believed other countries would want to study the SPV model after it was implemented because it was the first of its type in the world.

Mr Thaksin said the SPV model would be a part of government policy and would be announced in parliament.

The premier also wanted to show off his problem-solving skills to the public by ordering the Interior Minister to forward certain difficult cases that remained unresolved to him so they he could sort them out himself.

These apparently included cases of excessive amounts of debt that were too difficult to restructure.

"The premier wanted to talk to the poor people to find out the root of the problems to help solve them himself. His solutions would then be used as model cases for state officials to follow as part of the government's poverty eradication programme," he said.

Mr Thaksin also thanked cabinet members who had worked hard during the general election and called for them to work harder to stamp out poverty.

The first Thaksin administration implemented the poverty registration scheme to identify the problems of poor people as part of an ambitious plan to eradicate poverty within six years.

About 7.2 million people registered with the scheme and more than 12 million problems were reported. Most of the problems involved household debts owed to financial institutions and moneylenders and of agricultural land deprivation.