BANGKOK, Feb 12 – The Commerce Ministry today tendered nearly 500,000 tonnes of rice from the subsidy scheme and announced an auction for 220,000 tonnes in the futures market tomorrow.
Bid winners for 467,622 tonnes of rice from the 2011/2012 crop, 2012 second harvest and 2012/2013 crop will be officially announced tomorrow.
Three bidders submitted their offered prices this morning. The auction ends at 4pm today.
Caretaker Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisarn will be asked to sell the rice with high price offers while the Foreign Trade Department is responsible for negotiating with bidders whose offered prices are too low.
The Commerce Ministry has so far sold 2.2 million tonnes of rice under the pledging programme through 12 auctions while bids for nearly 150,000 tonnes of rice were conducted in the Agricultural Futures Exchange of Thailand last month, returning Bt180 billion to the Finance Ministry.
