BANGKOK, THAILAND – A Thai senator warned that rising energy costs linked to the Middle East crisis were feeding a broad wave of price increases and even urged households to grow vegetables and keep livestock.
Warning from the Senate
In a Senate session at parliament on 23 March, Senator Patima Jiraphat said that high energy costs were now pushing prices up “across the entire shopping basket”. As a concrete example, he cited an increase in egg prices of 20 satang per egg, framing it as an early sign of wider cost pressures.
He argued that energy-driven inflation was no longer confined to a few sectors and was beginning to affect basic goods. The situation, he said, demanded closer scrutiny before it turned into a more severe cost-of-living squeeze for ordinary households.
Mama noodles as a daily barometer
The senator also warned of potential price markups on Mama instant noodles, describing them as a staple food for many people. He called the product a kind of everyday benchmark because it was cheap and thus central to the “survival” of many wallets.
“He described the product as a kind of yardstick for daily life because it is inexpensive and therefore part of ‘survival’ in many people’s wallets.”
said Patima Jiraphat, senator.
He suggested that any move to raise prices on such low-cost staples would be felt immediately by low-income consumers. For many families, he noted, even small adjustments to such items could tip monthly budgets into deficit.
Call to the Commerce Ministry
Patima Jiraphat called on the Commerce Ministry to monitor price movements closely and demand transparency from businesses.
“Not every increase is automatically impermissible,”
said Patima Jiraphat, senator.
He insisted that adjustments had to be explained in a way the public could understand, including a breakdown of costs and the percentage increase instead of sudden jumps without justification. This, he argued, would help distinguish legitimate cost-led rises from those driven by profit-seeking.
Between costs and opportunism
The senator stressed that part of the current inflation could indeed stem from higher production costs. Rising energy bills and more expensive inputs, he said, could reasonably feed through into final prices.
At the same time, he warned against “opportunistic” increases in which companies exploited the situation even though their cost base did not justify the scale of the hikes. In such cases, he suggested, tighter oversight would be needed to protect consumers.
Costly plastics and raw materials
According to Patima Jiraphat, the impact of the energy price surge was no longer limited to fuel, electricity and transport. He said plastic products were also becoming more expensive because of higher raw material costs.
This trend, he argued, intensified price pressure in everyday life, since plastics were widely used in packaging and consumer goods. The knock-on effects could therefore reach far beyond fuel and utility bills.
More biodiesel and self-sufficiency
As a countermeasure, the senator proposed greater use of biodiesel in agriculture to ease dependence on conventional fuels. He suggested that this could mitigate some of the cost pressures facing farmers and, in turn, food prices.
For households, he recommended long-term steps toward self-sufficiency if global tensions continued to escalate. He advised families to grow vegetables, keep two chickens per household, and raise fish as a way to secure part of their own food supply in the face of persistent price rises.