The Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) in Thailand has completed all the outstanding payments to rice farmers five days ahead of the scheduled date of June 22, 2014.

The bank had paid around 90 billion baht (around ($2.8 billion) to around 800,000 farmers, who pledged paddy rice from the 2013-14 main crop (October 2013 - February 2014) since the military junta has taken over on May 22 and prioritized payments to rice farmers.

The BAAC President noted that a total of 1.69 million farmers had pledged around 11.81 million tons of paddy rice worth about 195.45 billion baht (around $6.028 billion) from 2013-14 main crop. He said the BAAC has completed payments worth 195.394 billion baht (around $6.026 billion), but payments of about 56 million baht (around $1.73 million) to a small number of farmers has been withheld owing to some documentation problems, according to local sources.

He expressed confidence that the completion of payment would rekindle the Thai economy and contribute to around 0.2% additional GDP growth.

The military government decided over not continuing the rice pledging scheme, which has dented the country's economy to a major extent. It has ordered the Commerce Ministry to conduct checking on the remaining rice stocks for quality and any losses.

Source - http://oryza.com/