The cabinet meeting on Tuesday resulted in various measures to help mitigate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and increase competitiveness.
Here is our short summary on some of the important new measures:
More cash handouts
The number of eligible workers from the informal sector for the 5,000 baht cash handout scheme has increased from 14 million to 16 million. The budget is now set at 240 billion baht.
About 10 million farming households will also receive the same cash handout scheme with a budget of 150 billion baht.
This means that the total value of cash handout during the coronavirus epidemic has now increased from the initial of 45 billion baht for 3 million people to 390 billion baht for 16 million individuals and another 10 million households.
About 7.5 million people have received the fund compensation between April 8 and April 29.
More benefits for the disabled
Approximately 2 million disabled persons will receive a cash handout of 1,000 baht while increasing the benefits for 120,000 disabled persons under the age of 18 from 800 baht per month to 1,000 baht per month.
According to government survey, disabled persons who are living in rural areas are only making an average of around 4,300 baht per month.
Food industry competitiveness
About 6.67 billion baht has been set aside for government agencies to improve the competitiveness of the country’s food industry. The intuitive include the development of smart farming, e-commerce for the agricultural sector and intelligence packaging.
The aim is to be ASEAN’s hub for food processing by 2027. The government expected the food industry in Thailand to expand to 1.42 trillion baht by then.
More budget for public schools
Public schools have been granted around 51.9 billion baht in extra budget to develop “genius classroom,” coding STEM, sound lab and other facilities, such as swimming pools and sport stadiums.
The initiative is also meant to promote active learning, the utilization of platforms, and increase teachers’ ability to teach a second league capability such as English and Chinese in public schools.
The fund will be distributed to 8,224 public schools around Thailand and the deadline for the disbursement of the budget is within three years ending in 2022.
Thailand Plus Package
The cabinet has approved the Board of Investment’s package to attract more foreign investment in automation.
Investments in automation machinery and systems will be entitled to double deduction for investment made between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. This will represent a 20 billion baht loss of tax revenue.
Expenses spent hiring new highly skilled manpower, in fields of science and technology, will also be entitled to a corporate tax deduction of 50 per cent the amount spent on their wages.
The deduction limit is set at no more than 100,000 baht per employee and for the expense between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. This will represent about a 10.8 billion baht loss of tax revenue.
