The cabinet has on Wednesday approved the disbursement of a 100 billion baht budget for the first phase of its economic relief measures.
The measures will concentrate on the agricultural sector and job creation via small government projects such as water management and road-building projects to support the grassroots economy.
The funds used are part of the 400 billion baht budget that was set aside to stimulate the economy following the outbreak of the coronavirus during the first half of 2020.
The budget itself comes from the one trillion baht emergency loan approved in June.
“The first phase will heavily focus on agriculture and the strengthening of the public sector,” said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha.
“Business and SMEs is another matter as more measures to support them will continue to come out respectively,” he added.
The Prime Minister said the government truly understands how much budget they have to work with.
He said there are still 300 billion baht left for the second phase of the economic stimulus measures.
There are also leftover from the 600 billion baht budget that was aimed to help businesses and individuals affected by the outbreak via cash handout and soft loans.
He said some of the budget that was originally set aside for relief packages and the prevention of a second wave could be used for stimulus measures later if needed.
The Thai economy is now facing a recession of at least 8 per cent, according to the Bank of Thailand (BOT).
The private sector is expecting 10 million people to be out of a job because of the outbreak and the consequential lockdown.
Prime Minister Prayut said the most important thing right now is to create jobs for people who either lost employment or their income due to the slowdown in global demand and the disruption in the supply chain.
He said the Ministry of Commerce is in talks with neighboring countries to find ways to increase border trade activities especially for food and fruits as the “situation is improving.”
The BOT expects Thailand’s export value to contract by more than 10 per cent in 2020. Cross-border trade fell by 7.6 per cent year-on-year to 265 billion baht in the first quarter.
“We are not the only country that is suffering, every country and the entire world is suffering and they are all connected in the supply chain,” he said.
“What we can do is to spend more domestically,” he added.
He said the government is doing this via actions to stimulate domestic tourism such as measures to extend holidays and the “Tiew Pun Sook” campaign with a budget of 22 billion baht.
Although these measures are still not enough to help businesses within the tourism sector, the situation is “gradually improving”, he said.
The BOT is now anticipating only 8 million visitors to the country in comparison to 39.8 million tourists in 2019.
Prime Minister Prayut said the government is working on measures to increase SMEs’ access to liquidity as well.
He also added that there is still a need to help SMEs that are experiencing a lack of liquidity as they have hired most of the workers in this country.
NESDC
The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) said on Wednesday that they have approved 212 projects for the first phase of the economic stimulus measures worth 80 billion baht.
The NESDC is in charge of screening projects proposed by government agencies and the public since June.
Some of the projects that have been approved by the NESDC include:
- Integrated-farming-landscape projects based on “Kok Nong Na Model” (“โคก หนอง นา โมเดล”) worth 4.95 billion baht.
- Big-data projects to help reduce inequality and poverty worth 2.7 billion baht
- Volunteering projects to support more than 710,000 elderly citizens worth 1.08 billion baht
- Smart farming projects with market connectivity worth 13.9 billion baht
- Income enhancement projects for farmers worth 8.29 billion baht
- Projects to develop community rice centers worth 900 million baht
