Food Prices Soar
Thailand’s rising prices of sugar and egg – a political issue? Simple inflation? Dark market mechanisms or even speculators at work? Food giant CP must love it.
You may not have noticed because for you the price increase is minimal or you don’t do your own shopping, but the issue has become so political that some of the good old socialist price controls are back.
Starting this September even the price of drinking water is controlled at retail shops and food courts that are considered necessary for low-income people.
The price of staple foods such as onion and garlic have determined the future of other governments in the past. The higher price of sugar and egg is not yet critical, but Abhisit may face a crisis at least as serious as the mob if people can’t have a sweet tooth anymore.
This year Thailand, the world’s second largest producer of sugar, had to import the stuff. Imagine, because of greedy traders and exporters Bangkok has to buy sugar for the first time in thirty years.
Wonder when we gonna import rice … Meanwhile, we’re told, civil unrest continues in Thailand …
It is not only Thailand that is facing a rise in food prices. A couple of weeks ago, there was a report in the media here regarding the same issue:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/7951300/Record-increase-in-food-prices.html
I agree that if the price of food continues to increase in Thailand, the locals will make a big deal out of it, never mind the fact that they are so fortunate to have plenty of natural resouces. Where else you can buy a meal for the equivalent of twenty baht?
But I shall demur with the report of the import of sugar into Thailand. I wonder what kind of sugar you are talking about. Thailand does not seem to be facing a paucity of a certain kind of sugar: I have seen plenty of sugar daddies hanging around in some tourist areas in Thailand. I have heard that a lot of them are pleasantly sweet, not that I’ve tried to taste this type of sugar!
A Perfect Day at Racthaprasong
the disquiet in my mind remains …
gilded Central World worshippers
applaud their perfect day
to restock their Calvin Kleins
at Ratchaprasong’s reopening …
while words and more words from
The Reconciliation Man becalm not
my traitorous troubling doubts
that The Reconciliation Man’s words and
more words merely cloak his inconsequence
to release a Khun Daeng manacled
to dependency but not ignorance:
Khun Daeng’s family, his friends and Udon hamlet
will no longer obediently stand by UNLESS!
they too get the latest Calvin Kleins
It seems to me food prices in Bangkok have all taken an extraordinary leap in the last five years. The exchange rate is not helping!
The banksters have set their sights on the commodities markets once again. This time they are manipulating the price of food. Last time they did so millions around the world starved to death.