Thailand: Severe drought to push agricultural product prices up

Bangkok (VNA) – The Department of Internal Trade (DIT) under the Thai Ministry of Commerce has assessed that the drought situation in 2020 could hurt agricultural production, resulting in continued price increases.

According to the DIT assessment, it was expected that the prices of many agricultural products would increase, especially those of jasmine rice, sticky rice, and non-glutinous rice.

The department said that the price of jasmine rice would be stable at a higher level of 14,000-15,000 THB per tonne.

As for glutinous rice, it would be priced at around 14,000 THB per tonne, while the price of non-glutinous rice would be 9,000-10,000 THB per tonne from the current 8,000 THB per tonne.

In addition, fresh vegetable prices also will increase as the output of vegetables that require a lot of water.

The price of pork is expected to rise as well because of the hot weather affecting the growth of pigs in addition to African swine fever outbreak among pigs in China, Laos and some other countries.

The price of palm oil is now rising. Fresh palm fruit is priced at 6-7 THB per kilogramme, rising from 2019 by 2.5 THB to 3 THB per kilogramme and crude palm oil is priced at 35 THB per kilogramme from the previous 16 THB to 18 THB per kilogramme.

The Thai Meteorological Department warned that the drought will reach critical levels this month and February and that the problem will continue until May before the return of the rains in June.

The areas predicted to be hardest hit will be 43 provinces in the northern, upper central and northeastern central regions./.