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Thailand and FAO: Achievements and Success Stories

Year of publication 2011

Pages 21 p.

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Thailand became a member of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 27 August 1947. Over the last three decades, and moving gradually from a recipient into a donor country, Thailand has contributed significantly to FAO to fulfil its mandates. The keen interest and personal involvement of Thailand’s Royal Family in agricultural and rural development in the country have been crucial elements of the evolving partnerships between Thailand and FAO. In this connection, FAO has a warded the Ceres Medal to Her Majesty the Queen in 1979, and the Agricola and TeleFood Medals to His Majesty the King in 1995 and 1999, respectively. There are, moreover, special projects initiated by the government such as the debt restructuring scheme, the village fund, the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) fund, and the universal healthcare scheme supporting the operation. Over the past half century, Thailand’s agricultural sector has moved beyond self-sufficiency to making the nation a major food exporter. Today, Thailand plays an important role as a regional food centre and ‘kitchen of the world’, feeding its own population and contributing to the food security of people in and outside of Asia. Indeed, Thailand stands as the world number one exporter of rice sharing over 30 percent of the global rice trade volume, in addition to canned tuna fish, natural rubber, etc. FAO’s direct support – or field programme in Thailand – was initially mainly supported by UNDP which had provided s ince 1950 some US$50 million for financing 136 FAO implemented projects till the early 1990s. In addition, FAO’s Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) – funded from the Organization’s own regular programme – started in 1977. Since then 105 full-scale and close to 20 small-scale TCP Facility projects with a combined budget of approximately US$14 million have been approved by the FAO Director-General. Another financing modality for field programmes started in 1997, the worldwide TeleFood Special F und, under which Thailand implemented 36 projects until now with a total budget of about US$260 000. Finally, 17 donor funded Trust Fund projects were implemented – both long-term and emergency – since the 1980s with a total budget of US$5.1 million. In overall, 314 projects have been or are being implemented by FAO in Thailand with a total budget of US$70 million. In addition, Thailand has benefitted from nearly 100 global/regional projects in which the country participated.

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