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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

state support for rural communities was galvanised by concern about communist
influence and spillovers from conflicts in neighbouring countries. Rural
development in all parts of the country was accelerated as a way to bring

communities with different lifestyles, traditions and ethnic backgrounds into
the same national economic and administrative system. The build-up of rural
development activities was followed by accelerated registration of private land
claims by the Department of Lands. But by the early 1990s new land available
for settlement was largely exhausted and concern about deforestation closed
access to remaining areas. The era of free land had come to an end.

Concentration of land ownership

Old rich families acquired land by royal grants to ancestors. New,
enterprising individuals, acquired substantial holdings by informal or formal
purchase. Across the country small-town traders with financial resources
advanced credit to rural families, eventually settled by transfer of land. Village
leaders and business families held land as a long-term investment and put it out
for rent or cultivation of cash crops. Anticipation of rising land prices spread as
towns and cities expanded. Families who needed money to settle debts sold
land to investors at bargain prices. The weak property tax system encouraged
absentee acquisition. Plots were often left unmanaged and unused or entrusted
to people with no contractual right to continued occupation or use of the
investor's land.

In the early 1990s, purchases of newly-registered private land by investors
using money borrowed from banks and finance companies brought a boom in
prices that in many cases ended in insolvency and financial collapse in the financial
crisis of 1997-8. The end of the boom and maintenance of financial stability since

the crisis has not returned land to smallholders. Instead, land acquired through
defaults has been gradually sold off to new private investors with losses arising
from defaults absorbed by the state.

The price of land today
According to estimates below (Table 1) the average price of private land

over the past sixty years has not increased more than national income or GDP
by any substantial margin. The main reason is that there has been a ten-fold
3
increase in the area of registered private land. In 1960, private land in urban

90 The Value of Land in Thailand Today

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