The Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said on Monday that more than 2.7 million shoppers have checked in to stores around the country yesterday.
Of the 44,386 stores and about 2 million users that have registered with the government’s tracing application to prevent any further spread of the coronavirus called “Winning Thailand” (www.ไทยชนะ.com), about 2.66 million people have checked in to these registered stores on Sunday.
About 14,000 stores, mainly the ones inside department stores, have registered with the app in Bangkok so far. The remaining are in other major cities such as 2,800 in Chonburi and 2,450 in Nonthaburi.
Of the 2.67 million that were checked in, about 1.28 million were checked into stores inside department stores, about 900,000 in supermarkets, 182,000 in restaurants and 128,000 in shops that sells other consumer products.
Pictures of overcrowded malls were widely shared on social media on Sunday which was the first day of the government’s easing of lockdown measures, raising worry that the second wave of coronavirus infections could be around the corner.
Measures to help SMEs
The Bank of Thailand (BOT)’s Deputy Governor Ronadol Numnonda said on Monday that the central bank has already provided soft loan worth 49.31 billion baht to 28,601 small and medium enterprises as of May 11.
The budget for the soft loan policy that was introduced to help businesses that have been affected by the outbreak was set at 500 billion baht.
The SMEs, with assets less than 20 million baht, which have filed for the soft loan from the BOT are mostly from the retail sector (49 per cent). This was followed manufacturing (26 per cent), services (11 per cent) and the remaining 14 per cent in other businesses.
Putting the approved loan from the BOT so far and the 55 billion baht worth of soft loan that was given out by the Government Savings Bank, the government has already approved a soft loan worth nearly 105 billion baht since the outbreak began.
As for the debt restructuring measures for other debtors, about 13 million debtors have been approved for the scheme with a total outstanding of 4.6 trillion baht. About 3.4 trillion baht of the restructured debts belongs to small debtors.
