From: ssg9328@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Samart Srijumnong)
Subject: This land WAS mine...My parents gave this land to me...
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 11:23:48 GMT
Keywords: Thailand

Reading the dialogue that has moved from conerning the Chuan government
(or LA Dodger, as Khun Tawit put it) to land ownership reminds me of
my experience at a district Land Office at Chiangmai. I happened to be
there because I was going to buy a piece of land from a farmer. It was
so painful to acquire that piece of land. The siblings had to sell the
land because they mortgaged their land to a non-dhammic capitalist who
was about to take over such piece and. A friend and I were looking
for a piece of land learned about this from a NaiNaa" (broker).

At the Land Bureau, you can see the meeting of two classes of people--
the SELLER and the BUYER. The former came to the "market" (land exchange
:Land Bureau) with Song+Thaew+ or even Sam+Law". The latter came by
their beautiful car. The buyer handed the seller his/her money. The 
seller handed the buyer the ownership document (NorSaw+Sam+ or Cha'Nod').
All this transaction was done in front of the Land Bureau officials who
in most occasions acted as witness in the land selling contract. 

We paid about 5% of the price to the NaiNaa" and later contacted the
ChangWad' Office of Land to issue a Cha'Nod' for us. The process of acquiring
such document is another painful experience. There were a lot of Bia"Bai"
RaaiThaang we had to pay. At that time the so-called value-added tax was
not yet implemented. The governemnt imposed tax on the amount we reported
paying the former owner. The estimation to what rate we had to pay was 
arbitrarily done by an official there. If one had connection with them, the
rate could be cut down. They told us that every year the KomThii"Din in
Bangkok gave them the expected revenue each AmPher Land Bureau had to 
make. We later filed the request to make Cha'Nod' for the land. Again,
it is another painful time. We had also to divide the land for each of
us. The government did not allow us to do the two things--acquiring Cha'Nod'
and dividing them to us. We had to first do the Cha'Nod' and then divide.
Each time there was some fee imposed to us. Finally, the land was divided
into two pieces, each with Cha'Nod'. What was incredible is that in 
each of the divided piece of land, there must be two names as owners. Then
the Land Bureau allowed us to tranfer ownership to the other. In effect,
I had to transfer one piece of land to my friend and my friend had to 
transfer the other to me. The result: the government could obtain tax
and fee from both of us!

Such painful experience is widely known to many who, then, chose to buy land 
from land development companies. Now you can see how middlemen could make
their profit. A friend of mine chose to do so and she paid about 240,000
Baht for a piece of land but in the document, it clearly showed that she
paid 38,000 Baht to Nai....something. The company was owned by the Lord
Mayor of the City we lived in. The company had its own way of avoiding paying
tax to the government. They would have probably did something to make Nai...
agreed to let his name used in the transaction. 

Let return to the price of land. After my friend and I bought the land for
about five year, the price had gone up to TEN times. Thanks to the demand
the demand from both in and out of the country. We had not anticipated 
y price jump like that. But there would have been many real estate investors
who had known the price trend and would have hoarded a lot of land. Many
of them became millionair in one night during this period (1988-1991). 
The sad thing is that the price of land multifolded itself when it ownership 
had gone from the farmers' hands.

After this experience, I have no longer wanted to buy any piece of land. It
made me guilty. Nonetheless, my decision not to buy land does not solve any
thing since there have been millions of those who have money and want a 
(or an additional) piece of land. The transaction goes on. The AmPher
Land Bureau is where the poor and the rich meet. After all it is not too bad
that I had chance to involve with it. I would have not seen it if I chose 
to buy from a land developing company. 

For those who had to sell the land, every time they pass by it they would
probably want to sing the Exodus but instead of saying "This land is mine, 
God gave this land to me." They have to sing "This land was mine. My parents 
gave this land to me."

Samart Srijumnong
Champaign, Illinois
November 7, 1992


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