Thai farmers and traders stand to lose
business as they face a serious challenge from many foreign firms, mainly
Singaporean, which have set up rice-trading operations and plantations here under
Asean seamless trade.
“Although
rice farming and trading are limited to Thais under the Foreign Business Act,
many foreigners can easily rent or own land for raising rice and conducting a
rice-trading business in the Kingdom,” a rice trader said yesterday.
At a
Commerce Ministry seminar on creating a strategy linking local and global
businesses, Thai rice exporters urged the government to protect Thai
rice-cultivating areas and the trading business from alien residents by
urgently checking the ownership of rice plantations and the certificates for
running a trading business.
The
source said many Singaporean and some other foreign traders are now taking
advantage of a loophole in Thai laws to purchase land suitable for paddy fields
and starting up rice-trading houses in Thailand.
Those
foreign investors tend to be Singaporeans, as they can easily come here to do
business since their country is one of the Asean members, the source said.
The
Asean Economic Community has now created challenges for Thai rice farmers and
traders. Singaporean investors are exploiting free trade within Asean to deal
in the grain, which should be restricted to Thais, he said.
Two
years ago, the ministry reported that some foreign investors particularly from
the Middle East had tried to purchase paddy fields in Thailand. However, the
government, through the Department of Special Investigation and the Business
Development Department, has not yet managed to investigate the circumstances.
Korbsook
Iamsuri, president of the Thai Rice Exporters Association, said some Thai rice
exporters are now not Thai, while some foreign rice exporters want to join the
association as members.
She
said Asean integration was a two-edged sword for the Thai rice industry, as it
has encouraged Thai exporters to expand to other Asean nations, while foreign
traders can easily penetrate the market here.
A study
by the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) showed that the lack of
value-chain development in rice farming and loose cooperation between
government agencies and rice traders had left Thai rice production and industry
less competitive and less developed than in the past decade.
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