Thailand caretaker prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, faces impeachment and criminal investigations by the National Anti-Corruption Commission for her involvement in the country’s rice subsidy scheme. Besides the probes, Yingluck and her interim government are also facing pressure from farmers who participated in the program but have not been paid for their rice harvests. The rice subsidiy program guaranteed farmers a fixed price of about $500 per ton of white rice, which is about 40 percent higher than the global market rate. The subsidy program, however, was followed by a huge loss, projected to exceed tens of millions of dollars, and a vast amount of rice has been left unsold and rotting in warehouses across the country.
CNA