Options plan faces graft threat

       State officials nationwide must guarantee that the government's new agricultural options programme to be launched next month is run transparently, says Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
       Mr Abhisit tasked provincial governors and officials with the need to ensure transparency under the programme.
       The government's new options programme plans to support about 4-5 million farming families -3.7 million from rice farming,400,000 from tapioca and 370,000 from maize - said Mr Abhisit
       Some 5.16 million farming families have registered with the scheme to date,according to the Agriculture Ministry.
       The ministry expected the scheme to cover 22.7 million tonnes of paddy in the first crop,4.2 million tonnes of maize,and 23.58 million tonnes of tapioca.
       The government, through the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), would spend a total 43 billion baht on options for rice, maize and tapioca in the 2009/2010 harvest.
       BAAC acting president Ennoo Suesuwan said as much as 25 billion baht of the total would be allocated for rice in the scheme with the remaining 18 billion used for tapioca and maize.
       The scheme would focus mainly on small-scale farmers, who would have their options capped at 20 tonnes for maize,100 for tapioca and 20 for rice.
       The options programme for maize,cassava and rice will replace the traditional price pledging scheme that has been a huge financial burden on the government and taxpayers for years.
       The price pledging programme was said to benefit only 800,000-900,000 families, mostly from rich and large-scale farmers in irrigated areas.
       Mr Abhisit said the pledging programme hurt the competitiveness of Thai rice as high subsidy prices encouraged local farmers to grow rice for short-term harvests at the expense of quality.
       The options programme would not distort the market, as reference prices set by the government on each crop would be based on production costs and market prices, he said.
       "The government no longer has a huge budget to implement the price pledging programme that only benefited certain farmers, brought about a lot of loopholes for corruption and induced an influx of crops from neighbouring countries," he said.