DHAKA: Thailand’s military government has paid rice farmers all the arrears of 92.4 billion baht owed under a controversial state purchase scheme.

A senior official of the bank that funded the programme said on Tuesday, reports The Straits Times.

The move ended the government’s biggest expenditure on the costly scheme, following a vow by the junta government to halt it for now.

Farmers had been waiting for their money since last October.

‘The government and the BAAC have managed to pay all those 800,000 farmers now and we don’t have any plan to spend on buying rice from now on,’ Supat Eauchai, an executive vice-president of state-owned Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), told media.

The farmers had been left unpaid for months after former premier Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved Parliament in December, turning her government into a caretaker one that had no power to borrow money to pay off the arrears.

An anti-government group staged a six-month-long protest that led Thailand into a political impasse until the military took control on May 22.

BDST: 1625 HRS, JUNE 17, 2014