Hmmm, vilken thailändsk exportartikel har tappat 40% det senaste året och samtidigt drivit upp landets kostnader för lagring 10 falt?
En klok kommentar (från Indonesien) till detta, med en finurlig rubrik:
Thai Rice and fall
Hoppas inte Khun Ken läser den 
The fact is that Thailand’s rice situation has been boiling over for some time.
Until recently Thailand was the world champion in rice exports.
Then on the eve of Thai elections in July 2011, the Pheu Thai Party campaigned on a scheme
involving a pledge to buy rice at premium rates: 50 percent above prevailing market rates.
The result was a landslide victory that catapulted Yingluck Shinawatra to the prime ministership.
And immediately the plan was carried out.
Apparently, the idea was to hold the rice bought at premium rates in warehouses and cut exports,
creating an artificial shortage in the world market.
When rice prices had been driven sky high, the government would then release its hoard for export and reap a windfall.
It didn’t work that way: the market promptly executed a neat riposte.
World traders quickly turned to other sources: Vietnam, Myanmar and Pakistan.
Then India opened its rice floodgates in September 2011 and drove down prices.
Now overpriced, Thai rice exports fell by 35 percent last year.
Thailand fell from top exporter to number three, behind India and Vietnam.
Actually, from the beginning the Thai farmers weren’t ecstatic about the rice scheme. They got only a fraction of the rice pledging bonanza.
Most of the premium money went to millers, suppliers of farm inputs and middlemen.
This rice debacle could be the fall of the Yingluck administration — unless her government can fix this leak in the economy
before it hemorrhages the national budget.
It must also offer a better deal to the farmers.
Though Thai rice has been priced way above the market, it remains one of the best around.
It needs only to be rescued from a populist policy blunder.
Thailand could be the world’s top rice exporter again, once it learns the lesson
that if you monkey with the market, it could make a monkey out of you.
