A total of 5.64 million tonnes of rice worth 84.5 billion baht has entered the government's pledging scheme since the new harvest season began last October.
A senior official at the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), the scheme's main credit provider, said 778,000 farmers have joined the programme for the 2012-13 harvest season ending this September.
Despite the high funding required, the bank will strive to maintain its capital adequacy ratio at a minimum of 10% to ensure stability, said the official.
Unlike commercial banks, the state-owned bank is exempted from some rules imposed by the Bank of Thailand.
To maintain stability, it has opted to adopt some standards including the 8.5% capital-adequacy ratio required of commercial banks.
The cabinet recently allowed the bank to increase its capital by 10 billion baht.
In a separate development, Thailand had shipped 6.93 million tonnes of rice as of Dec 28 including 1.7 million tonnes through government-to-government (G2G) contracts, said Tikhumporn Natvaratat, deputy director-general of the Foreign Trade Department.
Rice shipments dropped by 30% year-on-year to a value of US$4.73 billion, down by 20%, leading Thailand to lose its ranking as the world's biggest rice exporter for the first time in 48 years.
It now ranks third. India became the world's biggest rice exporter with 9.5 million tonnes, while Vietnam shipped 7.5 million tonnes.