In a move aimed at speeding up sales of state rice stocks, the caretaker government wants to call general auctions upcountry while letting relevant state-owned units sell their stocks directly to interested buyers.

Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Bunsongphaisan, who chaired a meeting of the panel handling rice sales, said auctions at the provincial level will be held twice a month.

Five provinces were found to have control of relatively huge rice stocks.

The amount of rice to be put up for auction will depend on the volume each province now controls. The Foreign Trade Department will work out auction criteria and selling prices without waiting for consent from the National Rice Policy Committee.

The upcountry auctions will be handled by a panel chaired by the provincial governor. Normally, auctions are called and held only in Bangkok.

Mr Niwatthamrong said the auctions are expected to begin by mid-March, with the winning bidders allowed to sell domestically as well as export.

Meanwhile, the panel gave the nod to the state-owned Marketing Organization for Farmers and the Public Warehouse Organization to sell their rice stocks directly to interested buyers and those wanting to help farmers such as companies, department stores and foundations.

As well, the panel also agreed to dispose of 7,000 tonnes of degraded rice stocks out of the existing 16.7 million tonnes. The government plans to set up a working panel soon to inspect the amount of degraded and deteriorated rice nationwide. The Commerce Ministry has been stepping up rice auctions and futures-market sales with the goal of raising 8-10 billion baht a month in order to pay farmers under the rice pledging scheme.

Earlier this week, the caretaker government persuaded the Election Commission to approve a request to use 20 billion baht from the central budget to pay long-overdue debts to farmers who pledged rice.

But the 20-billion-baht loan, which has to be returned to the Central Fund in May, represents just one-sixth of the total amount of overdue payments owed to farmers.

The government — in this case the Commerce Ministry must fill the huge gap by selling more rice as quickly as possible to raise funds to meet its obligations.

Mr Niwatthamrong admitted the government still needs to secure more loans to pay farmers, as the requested 20 billion baht plus 45 billion baht available from rice sales by the Commerce Ministry is still not enough.

Even with this amount, the government will still owe 90 billion baht to farmers.

"The Finance Ministry has already pledged to find new loans for the overdue payments to farmers over the next several months," said Mr Niwatthamrong.

"And once the government gets the loans, we will gradually pay the farmers."

Source: Bangkok Post