The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) looks set to use the Finance Ministry's latest information on the more than 500 billion baht in losses incurred by the rice-pledging scheme as evidence to back its impeachment case against former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
NACC president Panthep Klanarongran said yesterday the anti-graft body will include the information in an opening statement which it will make before the National Legislative Assembly (NLA).
The assembly will begin hearing the impeachment case on Nov 28 after the NLA on Wednesday voted to postpone the hearing.
The NACC has accused Ms Yingluck of dereliction of duty for failing to stop corruption and losses in her government's rice-pledging scheme and asked the NLA to impeach her. She chaired the National Rice Policy Committee when she was premier.
Mr Panthep said the information will also be used as evidence in a probe into alleged corruption concerning the government-to-government rice deal with China.
On Jan 16, the NACC decided to bring formal graft charges against 15 people involved in the rice deal, including ex-commerce minister Boonsong Teriyaphirom and 14 other officials and businessmen.
On Thursday, permanent secretary for finance Rangsan Sriworasart, chairman of the Finance Ministry's subcommittee inspecting the accounting of several government rice subsidy schemes, revealed that the country's 15 rice subsidy programmes over 11 years have caused massive losses of 682 billion baht.
He said the 15 rice programmes, with about 85 million tonnes of paddy, were initiated from 2004 to May this year.
Those schemes have caused the country to suffer huge losses of 682 billion baht from total costs of 1.1 trillion baht.
The subcommittee will report its results to the Rice Policy and Management Committee chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
This committee was set up to replace the Yingluck government's National Rice Policy Committee.
Of the 15 rice subsidy programmes, four are rice-pledging schemes initiated by the Yingluck government with total losses of 518 billion baht.
The other 11 rice programmes initiated by previous governments resulted in total losses of 163 billion baht.
The subcommittee did not break down individual programme losses.
As of May 22, about 19.2 million tonnes of milled rice valued at 225 billion baht remained in warehouses, Mr Rangsan said, adding that losses may go much higher once other costs, such as storage warehouse rents, are taken into account.
He said this accounting result will be compared with the rice stock investigation of Prime Minister’s Office Minister ML Panadda Diskul on how much actual rice is in stock and how much of it is substandard and rotten.
Kittiratt Na-Ranong, the former finance minister in the Yingluck government, wrote on his Facebook page yesterday that the public should understand that the 500-billion-baht loss was just an accounting loss which is based on the assumptions for the selling prices of the rice stockpiles, not the actual prices.
In addition, he said, since authorities under this government repeatedly say that the stockpiles are poor quality, this opens the opportunity for buyers to buy Thai rice at lower prices.
In 2014 the Yingluck government had earmarked funds to compensate for the scheme's losses. As a result, the actual loss would be substantially lower than the figures released by the Finance Ministry, Mr Kittiratt said.
NACC member Narong Rat-amarit, who chaired an NACC subcommittee examining the assets and liabilities of Ms Yingluck and her cabinet ministers involved in the rice scheme, said yesterday that considerable progress has been made in the assets probe, which is expected to be completed early next year.
The other four former ministers targeted in the probe are Mr Boonsong, former commerce minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan, former deputy commerce minister Yanyong Phuangrach and former deputy commerce minister Poom Sarapol.
Pheu Thai member and former deputy prime minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul, yesterday demanded that impeachment charges be brought against other former prime ministers for their rice subsidy programmes.
Mr Surapong said former prime ministers Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Democrat Party and Gen Surayud Chulanont should also be impeached retroactively as their rice schemes had generated losses too, as shown by the figures from the Finance Ministry's subcommittee.