The National Economic and Social Development Board plans to revamp its scheme to ensure fair income for farmers who grow rice, tapioca and corn after a series of problems occurred last year.

The secretary-general to the National Economic and Social Development Board, Ampon Kittiampon said the board, in cooperation with the Commerce Ministry, the Agriculture and Cooperative Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives will revamp some aspects of the scheme aimed to guarantee fair income for farmers who grow rice, tapioca and corn after a series of problems took place last year.

The most pressing concerns are; determining the best time to begin the project so that it best supports products entering the market, allowing farmers to request subsidies during the harvest season, and getting accurate information from participating farmers in terms of land ownership verification and calculating of the yield rate per arable unit.

Better publicity of the price pledging program will be included in the plan to ensure that farmers have a better understanding of the project, so that they can make the best decisions.

There are 447,300 tapioca farmers, 400,300 corn farmers and 3,468,000 rice farmers who have registered for the income-guarantee program. The number of farmers of tapioca and corn has exceeded the government's expectations.

Of the total number of tapioca farmers, 31.02 percent or 138,700 of them actually participated in the program.

The government has paid subsidies worth a combined 976.2 million baht to them. Meanwhile, 88.22 percent of corn farmers who have applied have requested subsidies that would cost the government almost 5.3 billion baht.

Of the total number of rice farmers who applied to the project, about 41.3 percent or 1,432,000 of them actually took part in the project, resulting in 14.47 billion baht in government subsidy payments.

So far, the government has paid out 20.75 billion baht in subsidies under the income-guarantee program.

Source: TANN