
CP Group helps low-carbon rice take off in Thailand and beyond
KOKI IZUMI and YUJI NITTA
BANGKOK/HANOI -- The cultivation of "low-carbon" rice, using methods that cut greenhouse gas emissions, is taking hold in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries.
CP Intertrade, part of top Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, started selling low-carbon rice under the Royal Umbrella brand in May and plans to double production in 2026. The taste is comparable to rice of the same variety, a CP spokesperson said.
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The Diplomat
4 hours ago
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Could Thailand's Cash Handout Scheme Have Worked?
One of the consequences of the Pheu Thai party's implosion is that its signature cash handout scheme will go down with it. Granted, the program was already approaching rigor mortis before Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra got herself, her dynasty, and her party (and Thai politics) into a hot mess by running her mouth to a foreign leader. The first tranche was delivered to welfare cardholders and people with disabilities last September, and a second tranche to the elderly in January, but the bulk of the funds for most Thais has been scrapped, with Bangkok blaming Trump's tariffs, although more likely because the first two tranches did little to stimulate the economy through consumption, the entire point of the project. (Phase 3 would have given money to 16-20 year olds, and Phase 4 to 21-59 year olds). Personally, I always thought the handout scheme was a good idea, but one unlikely to work given the mechanism, timing, and who was in charge. I don't think it would be a particularly controversial statement to say that Pheu Thai, and especially prime ministers Srettha Thavisin and Paetongtarn Shinawatra, were woeful articulators who couldn't explain why the scheme was necessary and what it intended to achieve. Srettha might have been a competent bureaucrat, but he was an appalling salesman. Likewise, Paetongtarn inspired little trust that she knew what she was doing, let alone in managing an unprecedented redistribution of state money. Recent surveys suggest that most Thais would still prefer the Phase 3 and Phase 4 handouts to proceed, but this is only around the 60 percent mark, which one might have expected to be higher when essentially they're being given money for free. The biggest problem, though, involved the matter of distribution. The purpose of the scheme was essentially a stimulus package to promote consumption in the most immediate and (although never stated) frivolous ways. 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It makes sense, for instance, that social benefits to the poor or unemployed are delivered in the form of cash or bank transfers (fiat currency, in other words), since, in an ideal world, while most of that money will be spent, a fraction of it will be saved. However, if you have a citizens' dividend scheme solely intended to boost consumption (like Thailand's), it makes less sense to deliver it in the form of hard currency. Firstly, that's because people could simply keep the money in their accounts, rather than spend it. Secondly, one of the obvious problems anyone could see before the scheme was enacted is that people could use the money to pay off debt. This meant the stimulus scheme largely became a transfer of wealth from the state to the banking sector. ('The impact of the handouts and the stimulus was less than we had expected,' central bank governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput told Reuters in January. 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In the end, the digital wallet mechanism was rational and relatively straightforward, as Pheu Thai would surely have been advised, yet sometimes an intuitive idea (giving people some money to spend) needs an unintuitive means of delivery.


Nikkei Asia
2 days ago
- Nikkei Asia
CP Group helps low-carbon rice take off in Thailand and beyond
Low-carbon rice is on display at this grocery store in Bangkok. (Photo by Koki Izumi) KOKI IZUMI and YUJI NITTA BANGKOK/HANOI -- The cultivation of "low-carbon" rice, using methods that cut greenhouse gas emissions, is taking hold in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. CP Intertrade, part of top Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, started selling low-carbon rice under the Royal Umbrella brand in May and plans to double production in 2026. The taste is comparable to rice of the same variety, a CP spokesperson said.


The Diplomat
3 days ago
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