ISOC, loans and claims

Deputy Dictator Gen Prawit Wongsuwan has been in debate with even persons from parties meant to be on his side of politics over his much-vaunted insertion of the Internal Security Operations Command, military police and other military personnel into a program that “manages” what are claimed to be “compromises” on land mortgages with so-called loan sharks.

A report in The Nation is about some backslapping by Gen Prawit as he ” led officials to visit Lop Buri to give moral support to the ISOC, Army police and administrative officials involved in tackling this issue.”

What amused us about the report was the data provided. Now, of course, this is a newspaper report that may well have garbled some of the data, but let’s assume that the newspaper got the figures provided by both Prawit and his spokesman right. What does it tell us?

The data claim that ISOC has been successful in “negotiation of fairer loan contracts covering debts worth Bt7.1 billion on behalf of 42,097 creditors this month so far…”. Yes, folks, that’s in less than a month! Even if that’s wrong in terms of time frame, it suggests that each load is worth an average of 168,655 baht.

Then there’s the claim that Gen Prawit “on Thursday at Thepsatri Rajabhat University [was able] to return 1,704 land title deeds – covering 2,054 rai of land worth more than Bt2.3 billion – to the rightful owners.” That’s 1.35 million per title deed and 1.12 million baht per rai, with each debtor having an average of  1.2 rai in hock.

In addition, Gen Prawit rattled off broader statistics: “a total of 25,052 debtors receiving 21,312 land title deeds covering 59,000 rai worth Bt30.6 billion.” That’s 0.85 debts per debtor and 2.36 rai per debtor. It is 2.77 rai per title and 518,644 baht per rai.

We remain skeptical.