Commerce chief to finalise price guarantee deal for oil palm and rice

The Commerce Minister has vowed to submit the price guarantee policy for oil palm and rice for cabinet approval today (August 27), the first two of five key crops that will mark the beginning of the government’s crop price guarantee scheme to help farmers nationwide.
Addressing participants of Monday’s “Economic Strategy under New Government” seminar, Deputy prime minister and Commerce Minister Jurin Laksanavisit said that the five key crops to receive price guarantees from the government are rice, oil palm, rubber, tapioca and corn. “Five types of rice will be guaranteed at Bt15,000-10,000 per ton under a budget of Bt21 billion, while oil palm will be guaranteed at Bt4 per kg under a budget of Bt10 billion,” he said. “I will present the scheme for these two crops to the cabinet tomorrow and hopefully the scheme for rest will follow shortly.”
The deputy prime minister added that other crops beside these five will receive appropriate supporting measures in due time, but most likely not the price guarantee.
Jurin further explained that the case of oil palm will need special attention since the market is currently tricky. “Oil palm supply is too high while the demand does not quite catch up,” he said. “To fix this, the Ministry is planning to enforce the B10 as mandatory biodiesel and push the B7 and B20 to optional alternatives instead, along with other measures such as using rubber road barriers instead of concrete ones.”
“We are also preparing additional measures to help expand export markets for rice,” said Jurin. “The top priority now is to restore markets that we’ve lost, such as Iraq, who has halted rice imports from us for many years due to quality issues. We must regain their confidence by improving our product quality and prove to them that we are ready to be a trade partner again.”