Forcible paddy purchase at better price

Human Rights

Forcible paddy purchase at better price

Shan State's Triangle Region Command has recently instructed the Kengtung township rice traders association to purchase 100,000 baskets of this year's harvest at 3,800 kyat ($3.8) per basket, a rate ten times higher than it was before the scrapping of the compulsory procurement policy on 23 April last year, reports Tai Touch from Chiangrai:

"The market price is presently 4,500 kyat ($4.5)," said a businessman who met S.H.A.N. in Maesai, Thailand's gateway to Kengtung, 160 km up north. "And the farmers are forbidden to sell their harvest outside their communities before the quota is filled. The punishment for defiance is a 5 year imprisonment."

Rice mill owners who mill paddy without official permission are also under threat of confiscation of their possessions.

As for rice traders, they were required to re-sell their purchase to the government at 3,500 kyat ($3.5) per basket rate. "It appears, at first glance, a loser situation," said his colleague. "However, we are allowed to use 14 pay (1 pay=3.33 liters) measures instead of the normal 16 pay ones at the official buying centers. And that may save the day for us."

The rice traders associations were set up by the government in place of customary government procurers since last year following announcement by Lt-Gen Soe Win, then Secretary-2 of the State Peace and Development Council of the end to 40-year old policy of buying paddy at discount prices. Before his announcement, the official paddy price was fixed at 350 kyat (0.35) per basket (54 liters).

Shan Human Rights Foundation reported in its November monthly issue that the rice procurement policy would resume in other townships in eastern Shan State.

The UN's World Food Program deputy director Sheila Sisulu had said in September, after a visit Burma, that the government's restrictions on freedom of movement of agricultural products was impoverishing and starving the people.