First Economic Cabinet Approved THB 316 Billion Stimulus package to drive Thai economy.
16-8-2019—After the first meeting of economic cabinet Dr.Kobsak economic cabinet secretary and director and Dr.Uttama Minister of Finance unveiled that today economic cabinet meeting had approved in principle 316 billion baht worth welfare/special loan stimulus package.
The packages comprised of about 109 billion baht government welfare budget and 207 billion baht of state own bank’s special loan to row Thai economic boat to three(3)% growth in 2019 and foresee 3.5% GDP growth in 2020 .
“Economic cabinet meeting today agree to have economic ministries to work coherently to help rowing the same economic boat to build the immunity to overcome the economic problem under the limited budget.”said Dr.Kobsak economic cabinet director and secretary.
In order to achieve the goal, there are seven aspects to be driven 1) Help create opportunity for grass roots base group of people. 2) Help SMEs. 3) Lift up price of farm products and farmer net income.4) Speed up government budget disbursement.5) Driving export. 6) Driving in more tourists and 7) Support the investment promotion and set the goal of export expansion.
Dr. Uttama unveiled that today’s was the first cabinet meeting, Ministry of Finance proposed a set of economic stimulus measure and the economic strategic development goal.
“We must together help building the confident in the country among the public which is for them to be able to confident enough to spend, by the reason that the situation has yet in crisis, if the business operator confident that they still able to sell their products, then Thai economics will not be aggravated.”
He unveiled that this set of measure is worth 316 billion baht in total, aiming to build confident covering three(3) aspects, consisted of 1) Healing the farmer who faced the drought, 2) Relieve economic impacted from global economic slowdown and 3) Support the cost of living among small income group of people.
This measure was approved in principle by economic cabinet and must be finally approved by the cabinet meeting on next Tuesday before start implementation.
Overall cost of the healing farmers and small income group diggiculty measure is about 109 billion baht, about 50% of the budget is available by the existing government annual budget, while about the other 50% must be proposef to the cabinet to approve the additional budget, while the soft loan limit to be provided by state own banks is 207 billion baht. BAAC will advance the cost of the measure and government will compensate BAAC in long term.
The overall money expected to drive Thai economy during the remain period this year would be about 316 billion baht if the cabinet approved the measures to be proposed next Tuesday, according to Finance Minister.
The cabinet meeting will be held every two month in average and try to have meeting on Monday or if Prime Minister not available on Monday the meeting will be held on Friday instead.The 7 aspects of economic stimulus components, the government sector restructuring and farm production restructuring will be proposed to cabinet approval on the next Tuesday, according to Dr.Kobsak.
He added that the relevant Ministries was assigned to attend the next Cabinet meeting around 30 August -2 September 2019 which the meeting will discuss about how to attracting foreign investment, how to drive export to grow against the export slowing down and to set up a committee to drive and follow up the seven economic driven measures.
