Till alla som skrikit sig hesa över Yingluck-regeringens risstöd och övriga intresserade: Rättegången närmar sig, och de åtalade förbereder sina försvar alltmer strukturerat. Nu senast dåvarande handelsminister Wattana
Han hävdar bland annat att regeringen hade kontroll över korruptionen och hade infört åtgärder mot det. Samt kanske viktigast av allt, att risstödet hade bra effekter på ekonomin....
En dåres försvarstal, eller ligger det något i vad han säger? Bedöm själva, delar av texten nedan, lite mer omfattande på länken till Tthe Nation.
"He argued that all economic policies had expenses depending on the size of the policies, such as the Abhisit government handing out Bt2,000 cheques to each citizen with an income less than Bt15,000 and the Prayut government allowing tax deductions if someone spent at least Bt15,000 shopping in the week up to the new year. "Projects which aim to help poor people have never been regarded as illegal," he said. Wattana said corruption allegations involving the rice-pledging scheme resulted from its implementation and not because the policy was wrong. He said issues ranged from corruption over the humidity and weight of rice, allegations about importing rice from nearby countries to benefit from the scheme, damage from improper storage of the rice, rice degradation, corruption over rice deals and delays in rice deals.
"When the government was warned about the corruption, it adopted several necessary measures to prevent corruption and damage instead of revoking the project," he said. Wattana said the Yingluck government implemented the scheme for five crop seasons and transferred the money directly to farmers' bank accounts through the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Co-operatives - an amount totalling Bt878 billion. He said the scheme boosted farmers' purchasing power and domestic consumption. He cited tax collected by the Revenue Department from 2012-2014, which showed an average of Bt1,793 |billion, while from 2009-2011 it had collected an average tax of Bt1,306 billion. The increase was Bt397 billion a year on average or 30 per cent.
For VAT collection, he said from 2012-2014 the department collected an average of Bt678 billion, while from 2009-11 it collected an average of Bt503 billion, an average increase of Bt174 billion per year or 34 per cent.He said state and private savings in 2011 reached Bt7,990 billion and the country's total savings in 2014 reached Bt12,010 billion - a rise of Bt4,019 billion. National savings increased 50 per cent while public debt to GDP in 2014 stood at 46 per cent, which was less than 50 per cent, as restricted by the law."
