Peeradej Tanruangporn of TDRI had an op-ed last week in the Bangkok Post. There are a number of parts of the op-ed which BP agrees with, but other parts where BP does not think they diagnose the problem correctly:
Under the current scheme, the government has acted as if it has a monopoly in the rice business. The government bought rice from farmers under a fixed price and was responsible for selling it. The consequences?
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Second, rice pledging has decreased the competitiveness of Thai rice producers. One easy measure of competitiveness is market share, in which Thailand lost a lot because the government failed to sell the rice. In terms of input costs, the Thailand Development Research Institute’s (TDRI) 2013 research project, “Thai Rice Strategy” reveals that both farmland rental rates and fertiliser prices increased after the rice-pledging scheme was implemented while productivity remained the same.
There is also evidence that rice-related labour costs rose after the scheme was implemented. The industry’s efficiency also fell because many middle merchants who help make the system efficient lost their jobs because of market monopolisation by the government. For exporters who specialise in selling to different customers, the exclusion of some means that Thai rice has weaker sales power.
BP: On the government acting as a seller of rice, BP agrees this is a problem (more below). On the competitiveness aspect though, BP is more skeptical. Labour costs rising could also be related to the 40-90% increase in the minimum wage. Yes, the daily minimum wage only affects the formal sector of the economy, but with such low unemployment if you increase the wages for the formal sector, it will draw labor from the informal sector and so to counter this, higher wages need to be offered to labour in the informal sector such as by rice farmers. This is actually part of the reason why BP believes the government implemented the rice pledging scheme in the first place as a consequence of increased labor costs with the increase of the minimum wage meant the government decided it would need to do something.
On farmland rental rates and fertiliser prices, BP doesn’t doubt they have increased, but how do you stop this if you are offering some subsidies to farmers? You are increasing the value of the land as people have been incentivised through higher prices to grow more rice. It would be difficult to have a subsidy where prices for rental rates did not increase. Fertiliser prices are more complicated as fertiliser is a controlled good subject to price controls with the problem becoming that amount of lower quality fertiliser being offered was lower, credit was suddenly no longer offered, under-the-table payments were needed, and there were shortages. The government relaxed this in January 2013 so officially the price has gone up, but this just reflects the market price. There are no import tariffs on fertilizer so it can be imported from overseas (all this information is actually from TDRI from these slides). Now, higher prices means greater demand and, by logic, this can increase prices, but this is not something specific to the rice pledging scheme. Any form of subsidy will have the same result.
On industry efficiency, this sounds quite plausible and it is a problem with the government acting as a seller of rice.
The op-ed continues:
Another big concern is the government’s role as a market player. The government is bad at the rice business and its monopoly only made the situation worse. The government failed to sell Thai rice, making Thai rice lose market share and leaving Thai farmers unpaid. Mr Viroj argues that the government does not understand the rice market enough and should not be involved in trading rice. There were opportunities when the government could have cleared rice stocks but it kept on speculating for a higher price. Thailand used to export 11 million tonnes of rice per year (roughly one million tonnes per month) and it is not clear if the government is even operationally capable of selling that much rice per month, let alone stock up for speculation. Now the government is left with a huge supply of old rice of questionable quality. What’s worse, the government has kept the accounting details of the scheme obscure, hidden from public scrutiny, making it very difficult for it to receive constructive feedback.
BP: Agree, on the government acting as a seller of rice. The Thai government is hardly the most efficient entity at the best of times and should not be in the business of selling rice. Also, agree that the government should have bitten the bullet and accepted greater losses in 2012 and the first half of 2013. However, the government finally did realize this and it did start to increase sales and hence the price did drop:
Source: FAO
BP: TDRI call this speculating on a higher price, but it was more hope of a higher price so the overall cost of the rice pledging scheme would not be so high. Also, rice exports have not traditionally been “roughly one million tonnes a month”. In the 5 years before the introduction, they were around 800,000 tonnes a month as the below graph shows:
Source: Oryza
Also, one of the key reasons for the higher-than-expected cost of the rice pledging scheme is India starting to export non-basmati rice again. WSJ:
An attempt to set global rice prices has stripped the country of its position as the world’s top exporter, left its prime minister facing a potentially ruinous investigation into the management of the plan, and thrown thousands of farmers like Mr. Thongma into a deep hole of debt.
Mr. Thongma’s tale began two and a half years ago. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra launched a gambit to shift more cash into the rural economy by buying up rice from farmers at about 18,000 baht, or $550, a ton, around 50% higher than the market rate. [BP: Actually, it is 15,000 Baht although there are different prices depending on the type of rice]
Ms. Yingluck and her advisers also reckoned they could drive up global rice prices by storing the grain they bought from farmers in vast warehouses, withholding it from the global market.
The plan relied on the fact that only 7% of the world’s rice output is traded cross-border. That means that a disruption in one place can have a dramatic effect on international prices. In 2008, some countries such as India and Vietnam, worried about rising rice prices at home, temporarily restricted rice exports. That sent global prices soaring from $300 a ton to a peak above $900, according to the World Bank, triggering food riots and protests from Haiti to the Philippines.
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reality quickly sank in.
The timing of the government’s rice program could scarcely have been worse. Just as Thailand began withholding rice from the international market, India resumed exports after a long absence.
BP: Exactly, as noted in a post in August 2012, it is India which is key reason why the cost of the scheme is much higher than expected and shows the problem with a rice pledging scheme. Yes, there are many other problems with the scheme as mentioned above and there are specific problems with the implementation of the scheme in the latest harvest in regards to payment which has become a political problem for the government, but they are separate from the core underlying problem with the scheme. India’s Business Standard on May 5, 2012 had this chart showing what has happened to Indian rice exports :
Evernote
Then the below USDA chart:
The Economic Times from January 2014:
In 2012/13, India’s overall exports totalled 10.1 million tonnes, including 3.5 million tonnes of basmati.
BP: Hence, non-basmati rice exports were 6.6 million tonnes. To put this in perspective. FAO from November 2013:
FAO’s forecast of world trade in rice in calendar 2013 has not changed since July, remaining at 37.5 million tonnes (milled basis), implying a 2 percent contraction from the 2012 record. The retrenchment is expected to be demand-led, and mostly imputable to import cuts in the Far East (Indonesia, the Philippines) and in Western Africa (Nigeria, Senegal), a reflection of good crops, but also of the restrictive policies instituted as part of self-sufficiency programmes. Poor production results, combined with strong domestic demand, are, instead, foreseen to lift purchases in Europe (EU), Latin America and the Caribbean (Brazil, Colombia) and North America (United States). Among exporters, the faltering import demand is foreseen to curb shipments from Vietnam the most, although supply constraints and high prices are also expected to depress sales by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Given a poor delivery record so far, Thailand appears unlikely to boost its exports beyond the relatively low level of last year. Expectations have, instead, improved for India, which may replicate the 2012 record performance, with Australia, Cambodia, China (Mainland), Egypt, Pakistan, Paraguay and the United States also forecast to export more.
Global trade in rice in 2014 is currently forecast at 38.3 million tonnes, 2 percent above the 2013 current trade estimate and only fractionally short of the 2012 record. On the export side, much of the trade growth is forecast to be captured by Thailand, where government releases of supplies from stocks have resulted in prices falling in recent months, helping the country regain its competitive edge. Ample supplies may also enable Brazil, China (Mainland), Egypt, Guyana and Paraguay to step-up deliveries. However, a return in force of Thailand as an exporter is seen to affect negatively sales from most of the other suppliers, in particular India, which may, nonetheless, retain its dominant position in the global rice market. Shipments by Argentina, Pakistan, Uruguay and the United States are also anticipated to fall.