Thailand: Limitations on a Proposed Rice Cartel

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej suggested April 29 that a Mekong rice cartel may take off soon. Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are to participate in the proposed Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC), which will coordinate a fixed price at which its members will sell rice. But agriculture cartels rarely work, and this would-be cartel does not even include the world’s top producers of the commodity it is meant to control.